We all know the sun as the huge ball of fire in the sky that keeps our planet from freezing
and turning into a ball of ice, and keeps the Earth and the rest of the solar system
in its place.
But what gives the sun its mighty energy and heat power?
And what is happening inside of it that keeps its fire burning?
And a question to those with a wild imagination, can we really slice up a piece of the Sun?
And if we miraculously did, what will be the consequences on Earth and the effects on people
and even the whole solar system?
Will anything ever be the same?!
These are some very big questions that we're gonna answer throughout today's video, and
to get to them, we need to get to know the sun on a more basic level first.
Let's get to it.
Let us first start with knowing some basic information about the sun, like we said in
a previous video (put link to your video about sun's history), the sun is a "G-type" yellow
dwarf star which means it's relatively small in size in comparison with other stars and
it's yellowish in colour with a temperature of 15 million degrees Celsius (27 million
degrees Fahrenheit).
The Sun has been around long before the Earth or any other planet, it was the first thing
formed in the solar system, Scientists have estimated the age of the Sun to be around
4.5 billion years old.
But where does the sun get its energy?
What's inside it that's causing it to keep on burning?
That happens due to a process called "nuclear fusion" uhh what?
Let's take a step back and explain.
The Sun (just like all stars) is made up of hot gases so hot in fact that it’s found
in the fourth state of matter; the plasma, and like many other stars, these gases are
hydrogen and helium in the case of the Sun.
Now, in order for the Sun to sustain itself, it constantly fuses each 2 hydrogen atoms
to produce a single helium atom, the fusion process produces energy which keeps the Sun
burning.
And this whole process is called "nuclear fusion"
You might have heard of this process before, because it is the same process used in nuclear
reactors here on Earth.
Now, the sun is at its main sequence stage which means it will continue on fusing hydrogen
into helium for another 4.5 billion years, and then it will go into another stage for
1 billion years and become a "red giant" burning and fusing helium into a higher element which
is carbon.
If you think that the sun is a piece of work by now, I don't blame you, but wait till you
listen to this.
The sun is so full of mysteries and unsolved phenomena, one of these is the sun’s corona
(no not the Virus) the sun's corona is the outermost layer of the sun's atmosphere.
The corona’s mystery resides in its temperature!
Let me explain, imagine you’re around a source of fire, and as you get closer to the
fire, you feel the heat more, and as you move away, you feel the heat less.
Well, that’s not quite what happens around the sun!
Weird, right?!
The outermost layer of the sun’s atmosphere; the corona is actually HOTTER than the surface
of the sun.
the sun’s surface has an overwhelming temperature of 5726.667 degrees Celsius (10,340 degrees
Fahrenheit), while the atmosphere is well beyond 300 times hotter!!!!
The reason behind this abnormal behaviour still puzzles scientists till today, but they
have a couple of ideas as to why it happens.
One of these ideas is what’s called “nanoflares” presented back in the year 2015, scientists
believe that small explosions called nanoflares burst in the sun’s atmosphere in millions
every second, and even though they are “nano” in solar terms, they produce an amount of
energy equivalent to 10 megatons of hydrogen bomb!
These explosions reach a temperature of up to 10 million Kelvins, and they cause the
sun’s atmosphere to heat up like we see in the sun’s corona.
That’s not all that's happening around the sun, the sun is very active, and that's not
unusual for a star, and it has a very strong magnetic field as well.
The lines of this magnetic field could sometimes be twisted on and around itself which helps
store a lot of energy that can sometimes suddenly get released.
An image showing some active regions of the sun.
The release of that energy is what’s called “solar flares” and they cover the whole
electromagnetic spectrum, and are a billion time the energy of the nanoflares we mentioned
earlier.
Solar flares can be very energetic that they heat material up to millions of degrees!!
Scientists classify solar flares into 3 categories: the “X-class flares” which are the major
solar flares that produce a huge amount of energy in the x-ray.
The “M-class flares” which are the medium size flares on the x-ray spectrum, and finally
the “C-class flares” which have the smallest amount of energy.
The energy that the solar flares eject are sent through space till they reach earth and
each class we mentioned have different implications on earth.
“X-class flares” are the biggest and they can cause radio blackouts on earth and around
the whole world as well as interference with radio signals and communications.
Solar flares can also mess with electricity lines causing electricity shortage like what
happened back in the year 1859 in London where a solar flare caused telegraph lines to stop
and burnt telegraph paper.
This incidence is better known as the “Carrington event”
And probably one of the biggest outcomes of solar flares in the modern history here on
earth happened back on March 13 of the year 1989 in Quebec canada, when the whole province
suffered from an electrical blackout of power grids that lasted as long as 12 hours.
The blackout was traced back to an explosion astronomers had observed 3 days earlier on
March 10 on the surface of the sun.
Following the explosion was a release of energy the equivalent of a thousand nuclear bombs
which was traveling to earth’s way at a million miles per hour.
The same solar flare also jammed radio communications, and didn’t only affect Canada, but had its
consequences on power grids in the United States as well.
“The New York Power” lost 150 megawatts of energy and “The New England Power Pool”
lost 1400 megawatts of energy causing 200 power grid problems across the united states
within minutes of the stars of the solar storm.
An image showing solar eruption.
Credit: ESA.
“M-class flares” on the other hand can cause brief blackouts only in the polar regions
of earth, while “C-class flares” are usually unnoticeable to earth.
Scientists say that solar storms causing major blackouts like what happened in Quebec are
rare, but scientists also confess it’s actually a matter of chance and can’t be exactly
known which solar flare will cause blackouts.
So, due to all these unfortunate implications of solar flares and solar activities, it is
crucial for astronomers to keep on studying the sun and understanding more about the solar
activities in order for them to better predict the sun’s space weather.
Because better predictions will ultimately lead us to come up with better solutions to
avert the problems caused by solar flares.
Because nobody would like to lose electricity and internet access for 12 hours in the future!
However, solar flares' effects are not all bad and harmful to Earth, in fact, they're
actually indirectly responsible for some of the most wonderful scenes on Earth, I'm talking
about the Auroras!
Solar flares can produce what's called "coronal mass ejections" (CME) which are a combination
of radiation and particles that interact with gases in Earth's atmosphere and excites them
to a higher state, and when the gases fall back into their normal state, they produce
energy in the form of the magnificent northern and southern polar lights; the auroras.
And if you're wondering about the different colours of the aurora, that's due to different
gases in Earth's atmosphere.
When the CMEs interact with the Oxygen in Earth's atmosphere, they produce a greenish
yellow light or a red light.
And when the CMEs interact with Nitrogen in Earth's atmosphere, they produce a blue light.
A Video Showing the CME interacting with Earth's atmosphere.
Credit: NASA.
We hear a lot of myths about the sun disappearing or the sun engulfing earth, but is there any
truth to that?
Well, as we established before, the sun still has 4.5 billion years burning hydrogen into
helium, so none of us should worry about any mysterious disappearances from the sun.
But I hope you like thought experiments, because we are going to imagine the most extraordinary
event that could ever happen to our sun!
What if the sun,,, got sliced up!?
This is a pretty wild thought, but let us indulge in it and see how it’s gonna turn
out.
The first step is obtaining the right tools, you can’t simply take out the table knife
and travel to space to slice up the Sun!
We would need an extremely sharp tool made out of a material that is ridiculously heat
resistant to sustain the enormous temperature of the Sun at 27 million degrees Fahrenheit
(15 million degrees Celsius).
First, I need to warn you that such a tool doesn't exist, because there simply isn't
a material right now that would not melt under such temperature, but that’s why this is
only a “thought experiment” you gotta be a little imaginative!
The second tool you’re gonna need is also as challenging as the first, which is a custom
made spacecraft to travel up to the sun and also withstand the temperature to perform
the slicing!
We can't send a human for obvious reasons!!
Ready with the two impossibly-obtained tools?
Let’s find out what happens after you slice open the sun.
There are 4 major consequences to slicing only a quarter of the sun moving down through
all its layers till we reach the core.
The first: Harmful radiation!
On earth, we first will have to deal with gamma radiation bursting towards us.
That's because the solar core is now exposed with no solar atmosphere to filter out harmful
radiation from the sun's core.
The second: Deadly cold!
The gamma ray radiation that will rush towards Earth will also lead it to its eternal winter!
Because the radiation will break the bonds between oxygen atoms and nitrogen atoms in
earth’s atmosphere that keep the planet warm, as well as Nitric acid rain pouring
down Earth.
The third: The birth of a new sun!
You might think that a quarter is not a huge portion, but in solar terms, this is a pretty
enormous chunk of the sun.
And after losing all that mass, the sun will never be the same and it will be quite unpredictable
with increase of solar activity because the sun will be in a stage of rebirth.
The forth: Solar system disruption!
The sun accounts for 99.8 percent of the solar system, it keeps all the planets, dwarf planets,
asteroids and other objects in a precise orbit and a perfect harmony between each other.
When quarter of the mass of the sun is sliced, we are looking into a hectic solar system
with different orbits and probably massive collisions between planets and other extraterrestrial
bodies in the solar system.
The earth may not even still be in orbit around the sun, but wander off in the vast darkness
of space.
The sun is the maestro of the solar system, if as much as only a quarter of it goes away,
the whole solar system suffers!
So probably we should only let this experiment be in our imaginations and not act on it anytime
soon.