You Are Living Next To A Nuclear Explosion

[00:00:00]You are living next to a nuclear explosion. [music] Not an explosion like a bomb, but a nuclear fusion furnace held together by gravity. Every single second, the sun fuses hundreds of millions of tons of hydrogen and converts a small [music] part of that mass into energy. And that energy, you won't believe, travels 150 million km through space, touches your skin, grows your food, creates your weather, powers almost every living thing on Earth, and [music] make sunsets look romantic enough for people to put sad songs on Instagram. I'm I'm just saying. But here's the strange part. The same sun that gives us life can also destroy satellites, [music] break communication systems, trigger massive solar storms, and one day it will expand so much that it may swallow Earth. So today, let me tell you a story of the sun.

[00:00:55][music] 4.6 billion years ago, there was no sunrise, no [music] blue sky, no earth, no moon, no oceans, no plants. There was only one giant cloud of gas [music] and dust floating silently in space. This cloud was called the solar nebula. And slowly, gravity began doing what gravity does best. It pulled everything together. The cloud started collapsing, [music] spinning faster, flattening into a disc, and most of the material rushed toward [music] the center. Pressure increased, temperature increased, and then something extraordinary happened.

[00:01:31]Nuclear fusion began. Hydrogen atoms started joining together to form helium.

[00:01:36]And in that moment, our sun was born. A star, not special because it was the biggest, [music] not special because it was the brightest, but special because around this one star, a small rocky planet would eventually form. And on that planet, life would [music] begin asking questions about the star that made it possible. Today, the sun sits at the center of our solar system. And when I say center, I don't mean emotionally. I mean literally. The sun makes up around, mind you, [music] 99.8% 8% of our entire mass of the solar system. NASA describes the sun as the object whose gravity [music] holds everything together be planets, asteroids, comets, space debris, everything. [music] Everything else which is Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, [music] Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, the moon, every asteroid, every comet and [music] every single space probe we have proudly launched. All of it together is basically the remaining 0.2%. [music] That's not a solar system. That's the sun and its accessories. So the next time someone acts like they are the center of the universe, please ask them to relax.

[00:02:50]>> DAMN. [screaming] >> Now let's talk [music] size. The sun is about 100 times wider than Earth. And if you could somehow hollow out the sun, [music] you could fit around 1.3 million Earths inside it. 1.3 million guys, that's not just big, [music] that's disrespectful. And yet in the universe, our sun is not even a superstar. It is not the biggest, it is not the hottest, it is [music] not the most dramatic. It is a mediumsized star, a yellow dwarf, as they call [music] it. Huge for us, but ordinary in the cosmic crowd. Pretty humble, huh? Now, here's something most people don't realize. The sun does not have a solid surface. You cannot land on it. You cannot stand on it [music] because the sun is a giant ball of plasma. Super super hot electrically charged gas. [music] What we call the surface is actually a photosphere. The layer that gives most of the [music] visible light we see from Earth. Above that is the chromosphere. Then the corona, [music] the sun's outer atmosphere. And this is where the sun becomes really weird. The surface of the sun is around 5500°C, but the corona, which is the layer [music] above it, can reach 2 million°C.

[00:04:04]Now, think about that. Imagine walking away from a bonfire and somehow feeling hotter. This is one of the biggest [music] mysteries of the sun. The further you go from the surface, the hotter it gets. Space clearly doesn't care about common sense, does it? Now, let's talk about sunlight. The light you feel on your face takes about 8 minutes and 20 seconds to travel from [music] the sun to the earth. So technically, every sunrise you see is already 8 minutes old. But here's the crazier part. The energy [music] that becomes that sunlight is created deep inside the sun's core. And from that core, it does not [music] simply come out straight. It keeps bouncing through the radiative zone. NASA notes that this energy can take around [music] 170,000 years to move from the core to the top of the convection zone. Which means some of the sunlight touching your face today may have started [music] its journey inside the sun before human civilization even existed. That tiny beam of sunlight has waited longer than all of the recorded human history just for you to take a selfie. Respect it.

[00:05:08]The sun looks calm from Earth. just a bright circle in the [music] sky, but up close it is chaos. It rotates, it boils, it erupts, it throws charged particles into space. It has [music] magnetic fields twisting and snapping like invisible rubber bands. And approximately every 11 years, the sun goes through a solar cycle. [music] And this is especially relevant right now because we are living through a solar cycle [music] 25, one of the sun's active phases, which means more sunspots, more flares, more auras, and more reasons to understand [music] the star we usually ignore. Basically, the sun has more swings. Except when the sun has more swings, your phone network, your GPS satellites, power grids, and astronauts may have a problem. [music] Solar flares are among the most powerful explosions in the solar system with energy comparable to billions of hydrogen bombs. Coronal mass ejections can send [music] huge clouds of magnetized particles into space at over a million miles per hour. [music] So yes, the sun gives you golden selfies, but it can also slap your satellite balance. [music] I'll tell you something beautiful. The sun doesn't just shine.

[00:06:14]It creates an invisible bubble around the solar system. This bubble [music] is called the heliosphere. It is formed by the solar wind, a stream of charged particles constantly [music] flowing out from the sun. In a strange way, we live inside the sun's extended atmosphere.

[00:06:29]NASA notes that the heliosphere extends beyond the planets and that [music] earth exists inside the sun's atmosphere. That means the sun is not just above us. It surrounds us. It reaches far beyond [music] Earth, far beyond Mars and far beyond Neptune.

[00:06:43]Almost like the sun has stretched [music] its arms across the solar system, holding everything inside its influence. And when solar particles hit [music] Earth's magnetic field, we get auroras. The northern lights, the southern lights, nature's most beautiful reminder that earth is being [music] touched by the sun. Even from 150 million kilometers away. Now one small betrayal from childhood. The sun is not [music] actually yellow. Every school drawing light was yellow circle, triangle rays, smiling face. The sun appears yellow, orange or red to us mostly because the earth's atmosphere scatters [music] sunlight. But from space to human eyes, the sun is basically white. It emits [music] light across many colors. And when those colors combine, we see white. So yes, the sun is not the yellow crayon star we were told. It is a white hot plasma [music] monster wearing a yellow filter because of our atmosphere. For most of human history, we worshiped the sun.

[00:07:39]>> [music] >> We wrote prayers for it, built calendars around it, planned harvest with it, woke up with it [music] and slept after it disappeared. And now we studying it with spacecrafts. India's Adita L1 mission [music] launched in September 2023 observes the sun from Lagranch.1 which is about 1.5 [music] million km from Earth. I'll explain the Lrange point properly in another story.

[00:07:59]From there, [music] it gets a continuous view of the sun without Earth constantly blocking the line of sight. And this matters because the sun is not just the knowing object. It is a [music] space weather engine. Understanding it helps us understand the solar storms, the satellite safety, communication systems and how the sun affects us [music] or how the sun affects earth. Recent adita studies have already looked at powerful solar flares, [music] magnetic field disturbances near L1 and coronal mass ejection behavior. Basically, the sun's violent [music] side in action, which is honestly incredible. Thousands of years ago, we looked at the sun and folded our hands. And today we send [music] machines near it and ask it questions.

[00:08:38]And then there is NASA's Parker Solar Probe. This spacecraft is basically humanity [music] saying, "Nice star, let's go closer." Launched in 2018, Parker Solar Probe became the first spacecraft to fly through the sun's corona. In December 2024, [music] it made history by flying closer to the sun than any human-made object before, coming within about 3.9 [music] million miles or 6.2 million km of the sun. At closest approach, it travels around 430,000 miles per hour. That's about 700,000 [music] kilometers per hour. Fast enough to travel from Mumbai to London in under 40 seconds.

[00:09:14]Meanwhile, I take longer to decide what to watch on Netflix. [music] And Parker does all this while facing brutal heat and radiation protected by the carbon composite heat shield. Its mission [music] is to answer some of the sun's biggest mysteries, like why is the corona hotter than the surface? Or how does the solar [music] wind accelerate?

[00:09:32]And where do high energy solar particles come from? Because the better we understand the sun, the better we understand [music] the star that controls our little corner of space, our Earth. But the sun will not shine forever. Right [music] now, it is a little less than halfway through its life. NASA estimates it has roughly [music] another 5 billion years before it becomes a white dwarf. Before that [music] it will expand into a red giant becoming large enough to engulf Mercury, [music] Venus and possibly Earth. So one day the sun will run out of the hydrogen fuel in its core. It will begin to change. It will swell. It will grow enormous. Mercury will be swallowed.

[00:10:11]Venus will be swallowed. And Earth, our home, may not survive. The same star that gave Earth [music] life may one day erase it. That sounds tragic, but it is also the most [music] natural story in the universe. Stars are born, stars live, stars die. And in their deaths, they [music] create conditions for the new worlds. The sun is not just a light in the sky. It is a part of a much larger [music] cosmic cycle. A cycle that existed way before us and will continue long after us. What I love most about the sun is that we treat it like background. It rises, it sets, [music] we complain when it's too hot. We celebrate the golden hour. We chase it on vacations. But every single day, this 4.6 6 billiony old nuclear furnace keeps our world alive. Every [music] meal you eat, every breath you take, every tree, every ocean current, every monsoon, every sunset, [music] every shadow is connected to that one star. And maybe that's the most beautiful thing [music] about the sun.

[00:11:07]It is terrifying, violent, unimaginably powerful. But from Earth, it [music] feels like warmth. It feels like morning. It feels like life. Plenty more stories to come on Space Stories. Be curious and let [music] the universe inspire you one story at a time.