Kind: captions
Language: en
The sun has been shining brightly for
more than 4 billion years. So where does
all that energy come from? The answer
starts with the sun's formation from a
swirling cloud of gas and dust.
As gravity pulled matter together,
intense heat and pressure began to break
hydrogen atoms apart into protons and
electrons, creating a high energy mix of
charged particles called plasma. As the
sun grew, the heat and pressure
intensified to unimaginable levels. And
it's under these extreme conditions that
something really, really cool happens.
Nuclear fusion. Under the crushing power
of gravity, protons in the plasma fuse
together to form helium atoms, releasing
a staggering amount of energy in the
process.
The ongoing nuclear reaction inside the
sun is the same process that takes place
inside a hydrogen bomb, only on a
tremendous scale. We're talking 10
billion hydrogen bombs every second for
more than 4 billion years in counting.
These nuclear fusion reactions driven by
heat and pressure are the source of the
sun's seemingly limitless energy. But
with all that explosive force driving
everything apart, how can the sun
possibly stay together? In the core of
the sun, you've got this pressure from
all of this fusion pushing outwards. And
the sun is huge. So you have all this
gravitational pressure pushing
downwards. And so you've got gravity
pushing down and the sun trying to blow
itself apart from the inside. And it is
this beautiful balancing act between the
two that keeps the sun in one piece.
If that were the end of the story, the
sun might really be the predictable
glowing orb we once thought it was. But
there's another major force at play. One
that makes our star far more dynamic and
hard to predict. Magnetism.