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When will the Sun explode? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:04
Speaker 1: All the stars in the universe are constantly exploding nuclear bombs. Um,
0:09
Speaker 1: that's a little frightening. We'll go out there and warm
0:13
Speaker 1: your toes on the you know, the thermonuclear fire of
0:16
Speaker 1: a huge bomb that's constantly exploding. That sounds it's like
0:20
Speaker 1: a contain and continual explosion. Yeah, you want to see
0:24
Speaker 1: a nuclear bomb go off, Go outside and look at
0:27
Speaker 1: the sun. I mean, not directly yourself. You just made
0:31
Speaker 1: this advice. The advice. Yeah, we'll ask them to edit
0:36
Speaker 1: it up. Hello, I'm Jorge and I'm Daniel, and this
0:50
Speaker 1: is our show. Daniel and Jorge explained the universe. Explain
0:54
Speaker 1: the entire universe, especially all the stars inside of it. Now,
0:59
Speaker 1: I noticed, Jorge, every time you introduce your our show,
1:02
Speaker 1: you're about to say R and Daniel explaining the universe,
1:05
Speaker 1: and then you have to correct yourself and you're like, no, actually,
1:08
Speaker 1: we're still bitter about that. You know. My real job,
1:13
Speaker 1: you know, is as a particle of assist and I
1:15
Speaker 1: have five thousand collaborators. And when we write a paper,
1:17
Speaker 1: we put everybody's name on the paper. And the policy
1:20
Speaker 1: has put everybody's name alphabetical by last name, regardless of
1:25
Speaker 1: who contributed more or less or whatever. Somebody decided they
1:28
Speaker 1: didn't want to have the argument, let's just make it alphabetical.
1:32
Speaker 1: And what that means that there's some grad student who's
1:34
Speaker 1: first author on like every paper. Wow, it's like him
1:38
Speaker 1: or her, and it's sort of makes some famous and
1:41
Speaker 1: also sort of infamous because people grumble about it. No pressure,
1:45
Speaker 1: no pressure. That's right in the Glaring Spotlight. But you know,
1:50
Speaker 1: today's episode actually relates to that, to Glaring Spotlights, because
1:54
Speaker 1: today we're talking about something very close to home. We're
1:56
Speaker 1: talking about how long the sun is going to live?
2:04
Speaker 1: How long do we have before it burns out or
2:07
Speaker 1: explodes or snuffs out? How many more projects can Daniel
2:11
Speaker 1: and Jorge or Jorge and Daniel do arguing about order
2:15
Speaker 1: until life on Earth is extinguished because the star is gone.
2:18
Speaker 1: Do you have time to clean out your garage or
2:21
Speaker 1: do that thing you've always wanted to do? Right? That's
2:24
Speaker 1: that sequel to We Have No Idea, our book now
2:27
Speaker 1: available from Penguin Random Pass. That's right. So if you're
2:31
Speaker 1: currently procrastinating doing something you should do, then you're actually
2:34
Speaker 1: gonna learn something today about how much time you have
2:36
Speaker 1: left to procrastinate right, so, um, yeah, let's let's jump
2:41
Speaker 1: in for we as usual, asked people on the street
2:44
Speaker 1: how long they thought that the sun would keep burning
2:48
Speaker 1: until the question is, how long do you think the
2:51
Speaker 1: sun will keep burning? Play along at home, think of
2:53
Speaker 1: your answer, and then listen to these random on the
2:56
Speaker 1: street interviews. How long do you think our son is
2:59
Speaker 1: going to continue to burn for? How long? I think
3:03
Speaker 1: a few billion years? I don't know. Millions, No, not millions, sorry,
3:09
Speaker 1: probably a long time. I hope a long time. Like,
3:12
Speaker 1: doesn't this affect your plans? Come on, you should know
3:14
Speaker 1: this al right? Well, I guess the first thing is
3:18
Speaker 1: that nobody seemed really concerned. That's right, nobody's rushing home
3:23
Speaker 1: to finish up something before the sun snuffs out or
3:26
Speaker 1: explodes that like what, the sun is gonna stop burning?
3:28
Speaker 1: At some point? Everyone seemed to know about the idea
3:31
Speaker 1: that the sun won't shine forever. Oh that's a good point.
3:35
Speaker 1: I never even considered that that I would be the
3:36
Speaker 1: one informing people by asking the question that the sun
3:41
Speaker 1: was not gonna last forever? Oh my god, what what
3:45
Speaker 1: are you saying? I know everybody seems to know that already,
3:48
Speaker 1: but maybe nobody seemed concerned because everybody's answers were very
3:52
Speaker 1: far off in the future. Nobody said, I don't know
3:54
Speaker 1: ten years years. Everybody's like random big number. Everybody feels
3:59
Speaker 1: like it's just so of far off in the future,
4:00
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter. Well, let's maybe take a step back,
4:05
Speaker 1: like how do stars even inform? Right? Like I imagine
4:07
Speaker 1: out in space there's stuff like dust and little bits
4:11
Speaker 1: of rock, and at some point the gravity pulls them together,
4:15
Speaker 1: like there's some nearby each other until they clumped together,
4:18
Speaker 1: and first it's a giant rock, and then it's an
4:20
Speaker 1: even bigger rock, and then it just gets more massive,
4:23
Speaker 1: and at some point what happens. Yeah, but it's not
4:25
Speaker 1: mostly rock. Stars are mostly made out of gas, mostly
4:28
Speaker 1: out of hydrogen. So in the Big Bang, most of
4:31
Speaker 1: the stuff that was formed after the Big Bang was hydrogen,
4:34
Speaker 1: a little bit helium and a few heavier elements, but
4:36
Speaker 1: mostly you just have huge clouds of gas formed in
4:40
Speaker 1: the early universe, and then gravity takes over and gravity
4:44
Speaker 1: slowly pulls those things together, as you said, and accumulates
4:47
Speaker 1: these gas clouds, and then those gas clouds get pulled
4:50
Speaker 1: together by gravity and they get squeezed together more and
4:53
Speaker 1: more until it gets denser and denser, and eventually it
4:57
Speaker 1: gets squeezed together by gravity enough that it starts to burn.
5:00
Speaker 1: And by burn, I mean fuse. You have like nuclear
5:03
Speaker 1: bombs going off because of the pressure inside these big
5:05
Speaker 1: clumps of hydrogen. Right, what do you mean they get
5:08
Speaker 1: dense and like just more and more hydrogen atoms just
5:11
Speaker 1: kind of bunch up because they're all attracted to each
5:13
Speaker 1: other by gravity. Yeah, it's kind of like a runaway process.
5:16
Speaker 1: I mean, if you had a perfectly smooth universe filled
5:19
Speaker 1: with hydrogen atoms, then no one would want to go
5:22
Speaker 1: anywhere because you'd be tugged in every direction at the
5:24
Speaker 1: same strength. Everybody would be attracted to everybody else equally. Yeah,
5:28
Speaker 1: that sounds like a good party, right, universe party, we're
5:31
Speaker 1: all attracted to each other. Yeah, party, that's right. Hey,
5:38
Speaker 1: you know the analogy works because we're gonna talk about
5:40
Speaker 1: fusion and fusion and things are going to get hot.
5:43
Speaker 1: You don't want your relationship to go supernova later on.
5:46
Speaker 1: In relationship advice from an astrophysicist, Yeah, yeah, today we're
5:51
Speaker 1: just knocking out that. To that advice, children go out
5:53
Speaker 1: and look at the sun. People have explosive relationships. This
5:58
Speaker 1: is our last episode, by the way, guys, right, so um,
6:02
Speaker 1: But there were little areas in the universe early on
6:05
Speaker 1: they were a little denser than others, and that's just
6:06
Speaker 1: because of quantum fluctuations. And then those areas were heavier
6:10
Speaker 1: because there's a little bit more stuff, you're more heavier,
6:13
Speaker 1: you have more gravitational pull than anywhere else. So then
6:15
Speaker 1: you start to attract more stuff, and the heavier you get,
6:18
Speaker 1: the denser region becomes, the more gravity it has, the
6:22
Speaker 1: stronger its ability to pull more stuff in. And then
6:24
Speaker 1: it gets heavier and heavier, and it's a runaway process
6:27
Speaker 1: where pretty soon it's accumulating stuff faster and faster. So
6:29
Speaker 1: you can imagine like at some point a giant ball
6:32
Speaker 1: of really compressed gas, right, Like maybe at the edges
6:36
Speaker 1: it's not as compressed, but in the middle, it's just
6:38
Speaker 1: everything is trying to push it together, right, But it
6:41
Speaker 1: doesn't immediately fuse because hydrogen atoms are also repelling each
6:45
Speaker 1: other at the same time, right, Like they're attracted by gravity,
6:47
Speaker 1: but they're repelling each other by other forces. That's right.
6:50
Speaker 1: Fusion is not easy to pull off. I mean, we're
6:52
Speaker 1: trying to do it in experiments all the time here
6:54
Speaker 1: on Earth. Like it's like trying to squeeze too many
6:56
Speaker 1: together they are on the same polarity, right, yeah, or
7:00
Speaker 1: trying to make two kids share one ice cream or something.
7:02
Speaker 1: Not a good idea. But so it's the repelling there
7:06
Speaker 1: have been attracted by gravity, repelling by electromagenic forces. But
7:10
Speaker 1: at some point, if you get them close enough, then
7:12
Speaker 1: another fource kicks in, right, and that's what kind of
7:14
Speaker 1: fuses them together. Is that true? Yeah? And that's when
7:17
Speaker 1: you access the strong nuclear force, and that fuses them together,
7:21
Speaker 1: and the strong nuclear force very strong then therefore its name.
7:25
Speaker 1: And when you do that, you release a huge amount
7:27
Speaker 1: of energy. And so that's what all of the energy
7:29
Speaker 1: is coming from, is just these hydrogen atoms fusing together.
7:33
Speaker 1: That's right. Almost all the light from all the stars
7:35
Speaker 1: in the universe is from hydrogen fusing together and creating
7:39
Speaker 1: all that energy and shooting it out into space. But
7:42
Speaker 1: is it like a kind of like a chain reaction,
7:44
Speaker 1: like you know, like a nuclear bomb, like one explosion
7:47
Speaker 1: causes the next explosion. Is that what's happening inside a
7:50
Speaker 1: star or is it just just the pressure just kind
7:53
Speaker 1: of makes like popcorn just makes all these kernels pop
7:56
Speaker 1: pop up. So on Earth, it's a chain reaction you're
7:59
Speaker 1: thinking of like fission. Fission is the opposite process, and
8:02
Speaker 1: you break in nucleus up and it sprays out and stuff.
8:05
Speaker 1: I'm here. You just have a huge blob of hydrogen
8:07
Speaker 1: in the core and it's being squeezed by the outside
8:10
Speaker 1: and everything around it, and it gets really hot. And
8:13
Speaker 1: you know that's true of every object, like even the Earth.
8:16
Speaker 1: What's at the center of the Earth. It's not cold
8:18
Speaker 1: at the center of the Earth. It's hot, and it's
8:20
Speaker 1: hot for lots of reasons, but one major reason is
8:22
Speaker 1: that it's being squeezed by gravity. All that rock on
8:25
Speaker 1: the center of the Earth is being squeezed by all
8:27
Speaker 1: the rock on the outside, and it gets turned into lava. Right.
8:30
Speaker 1: Why is lava hot Because it's been squeezed by gravity.
8:33
Speaker 1: Gravity is pretty powerful if you give it enough time
8:35
Speaker 1: and stuff. So are cloud of hydrogen. It just kind
8:38
Speaker 1: of suddenly ignites or is it kind of like burns
8:42
Speaker 1: begins to burn slowly, like as the star go like
8:46
Speaker 1: or is it is it kind of a long process? No?
8:48
Speaker 1: I think it ignites pretty quickly once it gets going
8:51
Speaker 1: um and it and what happens depends on how big
8:53
Speaker 1: it is. Um So, if you have a huge blob
8:56
Speaker 1: of gas, right and it forms an enormous ball of
9:00
Speaker 1: of of hydrogen, then it can burn really brightly and
9:04
Speaker 1: not for very long. If it's smaller, then it doesn't
9:07
Speaker 1: get to be big enough to burn like you know,
9:09
Speaker 1: like the Earth or Jupiter or something. Jupiter is like
9:12
Speaker 1: a star that never got started because it just wasn't
9:14
Speaker 1: big enough for the core to start burning. Oh, you
9:17
Speaker 1: need more stuff to m basically weigh down and squeeze
9:21
Speaker 1: the middle. That's right. Yeah, the core of Jupiter is
9:24
Speaker 1: not being squeezed enough. I mean, it's massive gravitational pressure.
9:27
Speaker 1: You would not like it it. Do not recommend it
9:29
Speaker 1: as a destination for your occasion, but against yeah, that's right.
9:35
Speaker 1: There are some common sense warnings on this show. But
9:40
Speaker 1: it's not hot enough to start nuclear fusion. Okay, so
9:45
Speaker 1: then things say squeeze and you got a sun. Suddenly
9:48
Speaker 1: you have this big ball of gas that's burning in
9:50
Speaker 1: the middle. That's right, it's burning through nuclear fusion. It's
9:53
Speaker 1: turning hydrogen into helium. Okay, cool, And I want to
9:56
Speaker 1: talk a little bit more about that. But first a
9:58
Speaker 1: quick break. Yeah, that's how stars are born, um, not
10:10
Speaker 1: just in Hollywood and they and then it just keeps
10:13
Speaker 1: burning for a long time, right, until all the hydrogen
10:15
Speaker 1: turns into helium. Yeah, that's exactly right. You have fuel
10:19
Speaker 1: and you burn that fuel, and when you're done burning
10:21
Speaker 1: that fuel, you're done. But the interesting thing is that
10:24
Speaker 1: the output of fusion is helium. Right. But and so
10:28
Speaker 1: what happens is that you accumulate helium at the core
10:31
Speaker 1: of these stars and then if it keeps going, if
10:34
Speaker 1: it gets big enough, then you can start to fuse helium.
10:37
Speaker 1: Oh and then that's um, it's like it it goes
10:40
Speaker 1: into secondary fuel burning mode. Yeah, exactly, burning helium because
10:44
Speaker 1: you confuse helium into the element with number four, which
10:47
Speaker 1: I embarrassingly can't even remember, is that lithium. Okay, so
10:51
Speaker 1: we're talking about the what happens to the star, and
10:53
Speaker 1: that's at some point it makes it turns all the
10:55
Speaker 1: hydrogen into helium and eventually into iron. And that's kind
10:59
Speaker 1: of when that's what kind of when a supernova happens, right, Yeah, Well,
11:03
Speaker 1: it doesn't necessarily happen. Have to be a supernova depends
11:05
Speaker 1: on the mass of the star and so let's talk
11:08
Speaker 1: just to be specific about a star like ours, you know,
11:11
Speaker 1: the sun, and any any object that's like about up
11:14
Speaker 1: to eight times the mass of the Sun is going
11:16
Speaker 1: to have an experience like our sun. And so what happens.
11:19
Speaker 1: It starts to burn hydrogen, like we said, and then
11:21
Speaker 1: the hydrogen gets and the core gets burned up and
11:23
Speaker 1: you get helium, and then you start to burn the
11:25
Speaker 1: hydrogen on the shell, and then the star starts to grow.
11:28
Speaker 1: It gets bigger, like physically larger in space. And the
11:32
Speaker 1: reason is that you're now burning the hydrogen on the
11:34
Speaker 1: outside and that the burning there is pushing stuff out.
11:37
Speaker 1: It's like the radiation pressure is making it grow. So
11:41
Speaker 1: the sun will keep burning and then it will expand
11:45
Speaker 1: and it will cool, so it'll start to get larger
11:48
Speaker 1: and it will turn into a red giant. So giant
11:51
Speaker 1: meaning gets bigger and red because it changes color because
11:54
Speaker 1: the color is related to the temperature, right, like, the
11:56
Speaker 1: cooler it is the right like it's kind of counterintuitive.
12:00
Speaker 1: The colder it is the star is the redder it is.
12:02
Speaker 1: But then the hotter it is, the bluer it looks, right, Yeah,
12:05
Speaker 1: And that's related to the wave length of those lights
12:08
Speaker 1: of that light. Yeah. Yeah, Like if you could found
12:10
Speaker 1: you press fast forward on life on Earth, you would
12:13
Speaker 1: see the Sun is this yellow dot. But eventually you'll
12:16
Speaker 1: see it grow and grow redder and then grow and
12:19
Speaker 1: eventually will take over our entire sky. And at some
12:22
Speaker 1: point we'll just snuff us out. That's right. Eventually we
12:25
Speaker 1: will be in the sun. Earth. Earth will just get
12:28
Speaker 1: like eaten up by the Sun. Yeah, exactly. But that's
12:32
Speaker 1: bill again, billions of years in the future. It's like
12:34
Speaker 1: three billion years in the future. Three billion years. Yeah,
12:37
Speaker 1: and so before but before we even get snuffed up,
12:40
Speaker 1: you know, it'll get pretty hot and we wouldn't want
12:42
Speaker 1: to be around anyway. So first the oceans boil and
12:46
Speaker 1: then we get snuffed up. Yeah, and then that's that's
12:49
Speaker 1: like the last phase before the Sun dies. And then
12:52
Speaker 1: it's mostly used of its fuel, and you know, it's
12:54
Speaker 1: like a fire. You use of the fuel and then
12:56
Speaker 1: the fire goes out. So everything turned to iron. Maybe
12:59
Speaker 1: it's not every star that can make iron, depends on
13:02
Speaker 1: the size of it. Mostly iron is made in much
13:04
Speaker 1: bigger stars. So our star is not big enough to
13:07
Speaker 1: make iron, so will probably make helium and a little
13:09
Speaker 1: bit of lithium and a few other things. Oh, I see.
13:11
Speaker 1: So some stars are bigger, so they have more pressure
13:14
Speaker 1: so they can cook iron, but but ours cannot exactly.
13:18
Speaker 1: Ours is not by far one of the biggest stars
13:20
Speaker 1: in the universe. It's relatively modest. Yeah, And and then
13:25
Speaker 1: when it burns off all the hydrogen sort of on
13:27
Speaker 1: the outside, then it'll go out, and what we'll left
13:30
Speaker 1: be left with is something they call a white dwarf,
13:32
Speaker 1: which is basically just meaning a big cool blob, something
13:36
Speaker 1: that's not burning anymore of what um. It's just sort
13:39
Speaker 1: of the leftover stuff. You know, you have enough elements
13:42
Speaker 1: there to sit there there. It's hot and so it's
13:44
Speaker 1: sort of glowing, but it's not actually burning anymore. And
13:46
Speaker 1: you'll have some helium and maybe some lithium and just
13:49
Speaker 1: be like a dense blob, but it won't be bright
13:52
Speaker 1: the same way, and it will cool and eventually become
13:55
Speaker 1: a black dwarf, which means basically a big lump of rock,
13:58
Speaker 1: like just a giant meter right, yeah, though mostly made
14:01
Speaker 1: of like frozen helium. Frozen helium for real. Yeah, because
14:05
Speaker 1: mostly what mostly what the Sun is is burning hydrogen
14:08
Speaker 1: into helium. And again some of that helium will get
14:09
Speaker 1: burned into heavier stuff, but most of it won't, I think.
14:12
Speaker 1: And so this is going to be like a giant
14:14
Speaker 1: ice ball the size of what. Oh, you'll be small,
14:17
Speaker 1: you'll be smaller than the current Sun. It's just the core, Yeah,
14:21
Speaker 1: just the core is left over because all the other
14:22
Speaker 1: stuff is blown out when it turned into a red giant.
14:25
Speaker 1: But yeah, some significant fraction of the mass of the
14:27
Speaker 1: Sun is going to end up left over as a
14:30
Speaker 1: white dwarf and then a black dwarf. Yeah, exactly. And
14:33
Speaker 1: you know that has a future. It could be that
14:35
Speaker 1: that um then gets clustered together later on and becomes
14:39
Speaker 1: part of a new star. You know a lot of
14:41
Speaker 1: the stuff that's in um in our star and in
14:44
Speaker 1: the Earth used to be inside of a star. And
14:46
Speaker 1: so you know, everything that we're that we're made out
14:49
Speaker 1: of is a remnant from a star that died. So
14:52
Speaker 1: if it wasn't for stars and these fusion furnaces making
14:55
Speaker 1: the heavier elements, then there wouldn't be anything else to
14:58
Speaker 1: make stuff out of. It would all just be hyde
15:00
Speaker 1: in the helium. And so it's gravity squeezing this stuff
15:03
Speaker 1: together over billions of years that makes the heavier elements,
15:06
Speaker 1: and mostly in the bigger stars that you get up
15:07
Speaker 1: to like iron. You know, the bigger stars can do
15:10
Speaker 1: more exciting stuff. Like our son is not going to
15:11
Speaker 1: go supernova, is just not big enough. But a bigger
15:14
Speaker 1: star could have enough mass that it collapses and it
15:16
Speaker 1: pushes it together and it can create a supernova and
15:19
Speaker 1: then two weird things, either a black hole or a
15:23
Speaker 1: neutron star, which I think is one of the weirdest
15:25
Speaker 1: things in the universe. So it's more of an implosion
15:28
Speaker 1: than an explosion. Actually, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's pretty crazy stuff.
15:32
Speaker 1: So you're saying that's when that's when the heavier elements
15:34
Speaker 1: can eat, right, yeah, in some of these supernovas, because
15:37
Speaker 1: you have heavy stuff flying around um and and it
15:41
Speaker 1: collides and it forms even heavier stuff. Yeah. And then
15:44
Speaker 1: but the heaviest stuff, like we were saying earlier, gold
15:47
Speaker 1: and all that stuff gets formed when the when two
15:50
Speaker 1: of those remnants collide, like say you have one really
15:52
Speaker 1: massive star lives its whole life, has a great time,
15:55
Speaker 1: blows up, turns into a neutron star, and another one
15:58
Speaker 1: does the same thing, and then the two neutron stars
16:01
Speaker 1: are orbiting each other and eventually, because they're so massive,
16:04
Speaker 1: they pull each other together and they collapse and they
16:06
Speaker 1: collide into each other, and it's in that collision that
16:09
Speaker 1: you can form the really heaviest stuff. So all the
16:12
Speaker 1: super heavy metals in the universe are made when neutron
16:15
Speaker 1: stars die, and that's why they're so rarities that you
16:18
Speaker 1: need these crazy events just to make gold and titanium
16:22
Speaker 1: and all these elements. Right, yeah, that's right. But it's
16:25
Speaker 1: crazy that we have that stuff on Earth yet, right,
16:27
Speaker 1: I know, we have it here on Earth, and it's
16:29
Speaker 1: like the leftovers these incredible cosmic events that happened billions
16:33
Speaker 1: of years ago and then got sprayed out into the
16:36
Speaker 1: universe and with enough time for them to like have
16:39
Speaker 1: a whole new life. You know. I love that everything
16:41
Speaker 1: in the universe is getting recycled, right, Like our solar
16:44
Speaker 1: system didn't even start forming until you know, five billion
16:47
Speaker 1: years ago, which is nine billion years into the party. Right, Yeah,
16:51
Speaker 1: let's talk about that, But first let's take a quick break.
17:03
Speaker 1: Right now, is when the sun is like looking over
17:04
Speaker 1: the hot sexy sun in the next solar system and
17:07
Speaker 1: looking corvette, right, yeah, it's wondering, like do I look
17:11
Speaker 1: like a big fat red giant. Tell me I still
17:13
Speaker 1: look small like a nice little yellow dwarf. Yeah, exactly.
17:19
Speaker 1: And one thing that I think is really interesting is
17:21
Speaker 1: that the smallerest star is the longer it lives. The
17:24
Speaker 1: bigger star is the shorter it lives. And the first
17:27
Speaker 1: stars in the universe were massive, they were incredible, and
17:30
Speaker 1: so they didn't live for very long. Like those first
17:32
Speaker 1: stars we talked about, none of those are around anymore.
17:35
Speaker 1: None of the stars that are in the universe now
17:37
Speaker 1: our first generation stars. They're all second, third, fourth generation,
17:40
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. All the stars were seeing the
17:43
Speaker 1: night sky in like the pictures of galaxy. They're all Um.
17:47
Speaker 1: None of those are among the first stars that were
17:49
Speaker 1: formed about a hundred million years that's the big Bang. Yeah,
17:52
Speaker 1: it's only recently people scientists even saw the light from
17:55
Speaker 1: those first stars. It's really hard to see. Um. You
17:58
Speaker 1: have to use the infrared because the universe was so
18:00
Speaker 1: dense back then. But yeah, our star is made out
18:03
Speaker 1: of leftover bits from other stars earlier that burned and
18:06
Speaker 1: exploded and wow and recombined. Right, And eventually you're saying,
18:10
Speaker 1: our big ice ball of the Sun is going to
18:13
Speaker 1: recombine with something else maybe and for but you can't
18:17
Speaker 1: do this forever, you know, Like there's a limited amount
18:20
Speaker 1: of hydrogen and you need hydrogen to to have these
18:23
Speaker 1: reactions to start. Eventually things get yeah, things get denser
18:27
Speaker 1: and denser, and you're run out of fuel. So like
18:29
Speaker 1: think about the Milky Way galaxy. It's got enormous blobs
18:33
Speaker 1: of of hydrogen gas. Still it's still making stars, but
18:37
Speaker 1: eventually it's going to run out, and then it's gonna
18:39
Speaker 1: stop making stars. And those stars are going to burn
18:41
Speaker 1: for a while, but they're not going to burn forever.
18:43
Speaker 1: So eventually everything's going to be like iron and heavier metals. Yeah, yeah,
18:48
Speaker 1: and then things will get dark. Things are going to
18:51
Speaker 1: get rocky. Things are rocky, that's right. But some of
18:54
Speaker 1: these stars, some of these stars are gonna burn a
18:55
Speaker 1: long time. Like there are stars that have lifetimes of
18:57
Speaker 1: trillions of years, but that's not up us. So in
19:01
Speaker 1: five billion years, we've got to figure something out. Yeah,
19:03
Speaker 1: we have. We have to figure out how to find
19:05
Speaker 1: get to another star. And we got less than you know,
19:08
Speaker 1: three ish billion years to figure that out. Oh man,
19:12
Speaker 1: so we have to jump to another star that that
19:15
Speaker 1: is burning and or um just learn to live in
19:19
Speaker 1: the dark kind of right, Well, you know, fusion is
19:23
Speaker 1: not impossible. You know, we can copy the energy source
19:26
Speaker 1: of the stars, um if if we we don't necessarily
19:29
Speaker 1: necessarily need a star, right, we could power ourselves through
19:32
Speaker 1: our own controlled fusion if we if we could figure
19:35
Speaker 1: that out. But do we have enough hydrogen or water
19:38
Speaker 1: to last as that long? Yeah? I mean the Sun
19:42
Speaker 1: is massively inefficient, right, Like most of the energy the
19:44
Speaker 1: Sun gets thrown off into space and then and not
19:46
Speaker 1: even used. So we wouldn't need anything nearly as big
19:49
Speaker 1: as the Sun to power human civilization. So we could
19:52
Speaker 1: just go out there grab some of that hydrogen floating around,
19:54
Speaker 1: or go to Jupiter maybe grab all that hydrogen, create
19:57
Speaker 1: our little mini sun here. Yeah. Or you know, if
20:01
Speaker 1: you're living out in space, you don't have to worry
20:02
Speaker 1: about pollution, like, so you can just do fission, which
20:04
Speaker 1: is much easier, and there's plenty of that stuff floating around,
20:07
Speaker 1: and you know, you get radioactive waste, you're just jettison.
20:10
Speaker 1: You're already in space, so who cares? Right, Interesting because
20:13
Speaker 1: you used to think the ocean was too big and
20:14
Speaker 1: you could just polluted forever without consequences. We know that's
20:17
Speaker 1: not true, but it is true of the universe that
20:20
Speaker 1: you're never going to fill the universe with garbage. Yeah,
20:23
Speaker 1: you think in a billion years people gonna say, I
20:25
Speaker 1: can't believe they filled space with junk. Man, you're responsible.
20:28
Speaker 1: You're gonna be like, don't throw don't throw plastic bags
20:31
Speaker 1: out into space because the space dolphins are gonna it
20:34
Speaker 1: kills all those cute space and space dolphins choking on
20:41
Speaker 1: your cosmic ways. Why is that funny, worry? I don't
20:43
Speaker 1: think that's funny at all, and I think you're a
20:45
Speaker 1: jerk for laughing. Cool. Well, that's that's kind of interesting,
20:52
Speaker 1: that the idea that maybe we will never leave our
20:54
Speaker 1: solar system and we will just figure out how to
20:56
Speaker 1: make our own little minisans to keep us warm. Yeah. Absolutely,
21:00
Speaker 1: I think I think we could do that. Until then,
21:03
Speaker 1: I guess, um, we're sunscreen that's right, And don't worry
21:07
Speaker 1: too much about the sun burning out. We have bigger
21:09
Speaker 1: problems to figure out than whether the sun is going
21:12
Speaker 1: to explode. You've got lots of time to work on
21:15
Speaker 1: that problem. Do you have a question you wish we
21:19
Speaker 1: would cover, Send it to us. We'd love to hear
21:22
Speaker 1: from you. You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, and
21:24
Speaker 1: Instagram at Daniel and Jorge One Word, or email us
21:28
Speaker 1: to feedback at Daniel and Jorge dot com