Stars are gigantic balls of fire
holding planets, asteroids and meteorites
in their firm gravitational grip.
And their fire sends light
into the farthest reaches of their galaxies.
But how did they get here?
I mean, these incredible orbs
must have come from somewhere, right?
The Milky Way galaxy spans about
100,000 light-years across.
And it contains somewhere around 200 billion stars.
If there are that many stars in our little section of space real estate,
imagine how many there are in the entire Universe.
Now, depending on where you look
in the night sky,
you could see around 5,000 stars
just with your naked eye.
The brightest ones have melodic names
like Polaris,
Alpha Centauri
and Betelgeuse.
Looking further out into the Universe
with the help of telescopes,
there are simply too many stars to name.
“That’s the North Star.
But what is that?”
That’s why many of these
are now identified more generically.
Like WASP-50,
HD 28678
and HAT-P-23.
But today,
you’re not just going to look into a telescope
and name some baby stars.
You’re going to be in the thick of it,
the hot dense thick of it.
To make this epic journey to a newborn star,
you'd need to raise a lot of money.
And not all investments are a great choice.
Take the Metaverse, for example.
It took billions of dollars to develop.
Sadly, if you had the foresight to invest
in companies that could define our generation,
like Meta was supposed to,
you saw your investments vaporized.
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I'm talking about contemporary art.
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Masterworks paid out tens of millions of dollars
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Just take a look at this performance.
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With all this money,
you might just be reaching for the stars.
Every year,
seven new stars are born in the Milky Way alone.
Now, that might not sounds like a whole lot.
But keep in mind that our galaxy
has already used up 90% of its star-making material
over the billions of years of its excistence.
And yet, new stars
are still being born all the time.
Now, to witness their birth,
you’d need to travel to one
of the many star nurseries in the Universe.
These are known as nebulas.
Nebulas are huge clouds of gas and dust
than can span light-years across.
So hop into your interstellar spacecraft
and set your coordinates
for one of the most famous stellar nurseries of our galaxy
a mere 1,344 light-years away.
Yeah, it’s here that you’d find
the necessary ingredients
for a star to be born.
Gas, dust,
gravity and turbulence.
Sounds like my car.
Being in the middle of a nebula
would feel like being in the clouds.
You’d be surrounded by
over 200 different kinds of molecules.
There would be hydrogen and helium gas,
as well as microscopic grains of silicon and iron.
And I hope you packed some warm clothes
because conditions in this cloud
would be frigid.
You’d need a spacesuit thick enough to withstand temperatures
as low as -270 °C (-450 °F).
But don’t worry.
Things are about to heat up.
Suddenly, you’d be hit by a blast.
This would be a ripple effect
from an exploding nearby star.
And it would cause the nebula
to become turbulent.
All it means is that the gases around you
would start to mix and swirl together.
It would be the beginning
of the epic event you're here for.
First, dust particles would begin to clump together.
These clumps
would become denser and denser,
forming knots.
Once these knots gain enough mass,
they’d start to collapse under their own gravity.
And their internal pressure
and temperature would increase.
Yeah, at around 2,200 °C (4,000 °F),
these high-pressure knots
would emit a dull red glow.
You wouldn’t be able to see it,
because that light would be infrared.
Oh, but you would be uncomfortably aware
of the temperatures starting to rise.
And things would keep heating up.
Eventually, the protostar before your eyes
would emit its first rays of visible light.
Wait.
Do you smell that?
Well no, of course you don't.
You're wearing a heat-resistant spacesuit.
But if you could,
you'd learn that this hot mass of dust and gas
would also smell.
“It’s disgusting.”
But not necessarily in a bad way.
Depending on the mixture of compounds around you,
you could detect hints of sweetness,
lemon or even alcohol.
But be careful,
your baby star wouldn’t only be pulling things inward.
Every now and then,
it would shoot powerful jets from its poles
at supersonic speeds.
These would flash brightly
as they come into contact with the surrounding gases.
All the while,
the protostar would simultaneously grow
and collapse under its own weight.
This would make the core continue to heat up.
Yeah, once it reached the scorching hot temperature
of 5 million °C (9 million °F),
you’d witness your baby star’s first nuclear fusion.
Deep within the center of the star,
four hydrogen atoms
would fuse together to form helium.
This would release a ton of energy.
With all that energy,
the protostar's pulsations
would come to a halt.
It would finally become a star.
Now, during the excitement of witnessing a star being born,
you’d have seriously lost track of the time.
If the star that formed in front of your eyes,
was similar to our Sun,
well, you’d have just watched
50 million years fly right by you.
And you might want to get your hearing checked
after experiencing all this.
Of course, there's no sound in the vacuum of space,
we all know that.
But in the stellar nursery,
filled with gas and dust,
sound waves may have a medium to travel through.
And if you were wondering
what the birth of a star sounds like,
well, it would be deafening.
If we could hear our own Sun,
it would be a lot like
Earth was covered in constantly wailing sirens.
Except multiplied by 10,000.
A new star created by a series
of violent contractions of superheated gas?
Forget about it.
OK, now that your baby star is all stabilized,
it could burn bright for another 10 billion years.
Maybe you’d also want to stick around
for an extended vacation
to see the end of its life.
But that’s a story for another WHAT IF.