system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Question by my 8yr old - Could all the lights on earth ever be as bright as the sun?

If we turned them all on together. How would we work this out?
Edit: thanks so much for your generous responses, I guess I knew the answer but not how to help him think about it more deeply. He’s a curious kid and I want to help him stay that way!
gpt
The other answers here have done a good job of considering other factors that make this great question a more interesting comparison.

But in terms of total output: No, just based on size. 

Surface area of sun = 6 x 10\^18 m^(2)

Surface area of Earth = 5 x 10\^8 m^(2)

So the sun has 12,000,000,000 (12 billion) times more surface than Earth does. And every bit of that surface is shining with the light of a flaming nuclear fireball.

Put another way: Never mind lightbulbs, even if *the entire Earth* was covered in an exploding fireball, we'd *still* be 12 billion times less luminous.