Four-year-old asks if ghosts melt in the sun. Dad turns to Twitter for answers

Kids have a special knack for asking questions that are ever-so-slightly out of their parents' knowledge bank.

This was the situation writer Joe Randazzo faced when his four-year-old presented him with a real head-scratcher: "Would the sun melt a ghost?"

Yup. That's a tough query.

As it turns out, yes - and they took the supernatural question very seriously.

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Almost 2000 retweets and hundreds of responses later, some fascinating theories about ghosts and their relationship to the sun have emerged.

Consensus suggests the answer largely hinges on the composition of a ghost - whether they're made of ordinary matter or something else entirely:

One commenter used their powers of deduction to declare that yes, the sun does indeed melt ghosts:

Others suggested that the sun's melting powers are the reason ghosts only ever come out at night (makes sense, really).

Several fellow parents turned to their own children, of varying ages, to suggest an answer:

Things got a little unsettling when some people suggested that rather than being melted by the sun, a ghost would absorb its energy - because they are composed of energy - and consequently become a bigger ghost.

Several argued that the term "melts" doesn't apply in this situation because ghosts aren't solids; therefore, the sun would "vaporise" a ghost instead.

So, there you go. Next time a child asks you about ghosts and the sun, you have some answers.