Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe - Classic episode - When will the sun explode?

Episode Date: September 12, 2024

How long can we enjoy the sunshine before we need a new star?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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so you can work, create, and boost productivity all on one device. December 29th, 1975, LaGuardia Airport. The holiday rush, parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys. Then everything changed. There's been a bombing at the TWA. terminal, just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged, terrorism. Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System

on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious. Wait a minute, Sam. Maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, luckily, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This person writes, my boyfriend's been hanging out with his young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her. Now, he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone. Oh, hold up. Isn't that against school policy? That seems inappropriate.

Maybe find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, it's Honey German, and I'm back with season two of my podcast. Grazias, come again. We got you when it comes to the latest in music and entertainment with interviews with some of your favorite Latin artists and celebrities. You didn't have to audition? No, I didn't audition. I haven't audition in like over 25 years.

Oh, wow. That's a real G-talk right there. Oh, yeah. We'll talk about all that's viral and trending, with a little bit of cheesement and a whole lot of laughs. And of course, the great vivas you've come to expect. Listen to the new season of Dacias Come Again on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

Every case that. is a cold case that has DNA right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime on the new podcast america's crime lab every case has a story to tell and the DNA holds the truth he never thought he was going to get caught and i just looked at my computer screen i was just like gotcha this technology's already solving so many cases listen to america's crime lab on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts All the stars in the universe are constantly exploding nuclear bombs. That's a little frightening.

Well, go out there and warm your toes on the thermonuclear fire of a huge bomb that's constantly exploding. That sounds cozy, isn't it? It's like a contain and continual explosion. Yeah, you want to see a nuclear bomb go off? Go outside and look at the sun. I mean, not directly. Don't burn yourself. You just made this podcast not safe for children.

On advice of counsel, I have to retract their previous advice. Yeah, we'll ask them to edit it up. Hello, I'm Jorge. And I'm Daniel. And this is our show. Daniel and Jorge explain the universe. Explain the entire universe, especially all the stars inside of it. Now, I noticed Jorge, every time you introduce our show, you're about to say, Jorge and Daniel, I explain the universe. And then you have to correct yourself, and you're like, no, actually, Daniel and Jorge.

Yeah, I'm still bitter about that, you know. My real job, you know, is as a particle physicist, and I have 5,000 collaborators. And when we write a paper, we put everybody's name on the paper. And the policy is put everybody's name alphabetical by last name, regardless of who contributed more or less or whatever. Somebody decided they didn't want to. have the argument, let's just make it alphabetical.

Uh-huh. And what that means that there's some grad student who's first author on like every paper. Wow. It's like him or her at all. And it sort of makes them famous and also sort of infamous because people grumble about it. No pressure. No pressure. That's right.

In the glaring spotlight. But you know, today's episode actually relates to that to glaring spotlights because today we're talking about something very close to home. We're talking about How long the sun is going to live? How long do we have before it burns out or explodes or snuffs out?

How many more projects can Daniel and Jorge or Jorge and Daniel do arguing about order until life on earth is extinguished because the star is gone? Do you have time to clean out your garage or do that thing you've always wanted to do? Right, that's sequel to We Have No Idea, Our Book, Now Available. from Penguin Random Pass. That's right. So if you're currently procrastinating doing something you should do,

then you're actually going to learn something today about how much time you have left to procrastinate. Right, yeah. So, yeah, let's jump in. We, as usual, asked people on the street how long they thought that the sun would keep burning. And so the question is, how long do you think the sun will keep burning?

Play along at home, think of your answer, and then listen to these random on the street interviews. How long do you think our sun is going to continue to burn for? How long? I think a few billion years. I don't know. Millions? No, not millions.

Sorry. Probably a long time. I hope a long time. Doesn't this affect your plans? Come on, you should know this. All right. Well, I guess the first thing is that nobody seemed really concerned. That's right.

Nobody's rushing home to finish up something before the sun snuffs out or explodes. Nobody's like, what? The sun's going to stop burning at some point. Everyone seemed to know about the idea that the sun won't shine forever. Oh, that's a good point. I never even considered that, that I would be the one informing people by asking the question that the sun was not going to last forever. Oh, my God. What?

What are you saying? No, everybody seems to know that already. But maybe nobody seemed concerned because everybody's answers were very far off in the future. Nobody said, I don't know, 10 years or 100 years. Right. Everybody's like random big number. Everybody feels like it's just so far off in the future, it doesn't matter. Well, let's maybe take a step back, like how to stars even form, right?

Like, I imagine out in space there's stuff like dust and little bits of rock. And at some point, the gravity pulls them together. Like, there's some nearby each other until they clump together. And first it's a giant rock and then it's an even bigger rock. And then it just gets more massive. And at some point, what happens? Yeah, but it's not mostly. rock. Stars are mostly made out of gas, mostly out of hydrogen. So in the Big Bang, most of the

stuff that was formed after the Big Bang was hydrogen. A little bit helium and a few heavier elements, but mostly you just have huge clouds of gas formed in the early universe. And then gravity takes over. Gravity slowly pulls those things together, as you said, and accumulates these gas clouds. And then those gas clouds get pulled together by gravity, and they get squeezed together more and more until it gets denser and denser. And eventually, it gets squeezed together by gravity enough that it starts to burn. And by burn, I mean fuse. I mean, you have, like, nuclear bombs going off because of the pressure inside these big clumps

of hydrogen. Right. But what do you mean they get denser and denser? Like, just more and more hydrogen atoms just kind of bunch up because they're all attracted to each other by gravity. Yeah, it's kind of like a runaway process. I mean, if you had a perfectly smooth universe filled with hydrogen atoms, then no one would want to go anywhere because you'd be tugged in every direction.

at the same strength. Everybody would be attracted to everybody else equally. Yeah, that sounds like a good party, right? We're the universe party. We're all attracted to each other. Creation is just a big swinger party. That's right.

Hey, you know, the analogy works because we're going to talk about fusion and fusion later. And things are going to get hot. You don't want your relationship to go supernova. Later on, in relationship advice from an astrophysicist. Yep, yeah.

Today we're just knocking out that advice. Children go out and look at the sun, people have explosive relationships. This is our last episode, by the way, guys. Right. But there were little areas in the universe early on. They were a little denser than others, and that's just because of quantum fluctuations.

And then those areas were heavier, because there's a little bit more stuff. You're heavier. You have more gravitational pull than anywhere else. So then you start to attract more stuff. And the heavier you get, the denser a region becomes, the more gravity it has, the stronger its ability to pull more stuff in,

And then it gets heavier and heavier, and it's a runaway process where pretty soon it's accumulating stuff faster and faster. So you can imagine, like, at some point, a giant ball of really compressed gas, right? Like maybe at the edges it's not as compressed, but in the middle, it's just everything's trying to push it together, right? But it doesn't immediately fuse because hydrogen atoms are also repelling each other at the same time, right? Like they're attracted by gravity, but they're repelling each other by other forces. That's right. Fusion is not easy to pull off. I mean, we're trying to do it in experiments all the time here on Earth. It's like trying to squeeze two magnets together there are on the same polarity, right?

Yeah, or trying to make two kids share one ice cream or something. It's just not easy to do. Not a good idea. So they're being attracted by gravity, repelling by electromagnetic forces, but at some point, if you get them close enough, then another force kicks in, right? And that's what kind of fuses them together. Is that true? Yeah, and that's when you access to the strong nuclear force.

And that fuses them together. and the strong nuclear force, very strong, therefore, it's name. And when you do that, you release a huge amount of energy. And so that's what all of the energy is coming from, is just these hydrogen atoms fusing together. That's right. Almost all the light from all the stars in the universe is from hydrogen fusing together

and creating all that energy and shooting it out into space. But is it like a kind of like a chain reaction? Like a nuclear bomb, like one explosion causes the next explosion. Is that what's happening inside a star? Or is it just the pressure just kind of makes, like popcorn, just makes all these kernels pop, pop, pop up, pop. So on Earth, it's a chain reaction. You're thinking of like fission.

Fission is the opposite process. And you break a nucleus up and it sprays out and stuff. Here you just have a huge blob of hydrogen in the core and it's being squeezed by the outside and everything around it. And it gets really hot. And, you know, that's true of every object, like even the Earth. What's at the center of the Earth? It's not cold at the center of the Earth.

it's hot, and it's hot for lots of reasons, but one major reason is that it's being squeezed by gravity. All that rock in the center of the earth is being squeezed by all the rock on the outside, and it gets turned into lava, right? Why is lava hot? Because it's been squeezed by gravity. Gravity is pretty powerful if you give it enough time and stuff. So our cloud of hydrogen, it just kind of suddenly ignites,

or does it kind of like burns, begins to burn slowly? Like, is the star go like, push? Or is it kind of a long process? No, I think it ignites pretty quickly once it gets going. And what happens depends on how big it is. So if you have a huge blob of gas, right, and it forms an enormous ball of hydrogen, then it can burn really brightly and not for very long. If it's smaller, then it doesn't get to be big enough to burn, like the Earth or Jupiter or something. Jupiter is like a star that never got started because it wasn't big enough for the core to start burning.

Oh, you need more stuff to basically weigh down and squeeze the middle. That's right. Yeah, the core of Jupiter is not being squeezed enough. I mean, it's massive gravitational pressure. You would not like it. Do not recommend it as a destination for your vacation. Right. That one we do warn you against. Yeah, that's right. There are some common sense warnings on this show. Do not go to Jupiter. But it's not hot enough to start nuclear fusion.

Okay. So then things like squeeze and you get a sun. Suddenly you have this big ball of gas that's burning in the middle. That's right. It's burning through nuclear fusion. It's turning hydrogen into helium. Okay, cool. And I want to talk a little bit more about that.

But first, a quick break. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly and now I'm seriously suspicious. Wait a minute, Sam. Maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast. So we'll find out soon. This person writes, my boyfriend has been hanging out with his young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her.

Now, he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone. Now, hold up. Isn't that against school policy? That sounds totally inappropriate. Well, according to this person, this is her boyfriend's former professor, and they're the same age. And it's even more likely that they're cheating. He insists there's nothing between them. I mean, do you believe him?

Well, he's certainly trying to get this person to believe him because he now wants them both to meet. So, do we find out if this person's boyfriend really cheated with his professor or not? To hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. December 29th, 1975, LaGuardia Airport. The holiday rush, parents hauling luggage,

kids gripping their new Christmas toys. Then, at 6.33 p.m., everything changed. There's been a bombing at the T.W. The UA terminal. Apparently, the explosion actually impelled metal glass. The injured were being loaded into ambulances. Just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged, and it was here to stay.

Terrorism. Law and order, criminal justice system is back. In season two, we're turning our focus to a threat that hides in plain sight. That's harder to predict and even hard. harder to stop. Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A foot washed up a shoe with some bones in it. They had no idea who it was. Most everything was burned up pretty good from the fire that not a whole lot was salvageable.

These are the coldest of cold cases, but everything is about to change. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime. A small lab in Texas is cracking the code on DNA. Using new scientific tools, they're finding clues in evidence so tiny you might just miss it. He never thought he was going to get caught. And I just looked at my computer screen. I was just like, ah, gotcha. On America's Crime Lab, we'll learn about victims and survivors.

And you'll meet the team behind the scenes at Othrum, the Houston Lab that takes on the most hopeless cases to finally solve the unsolvable. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, sis, what if I could promise you you never had to listen to a condescending finance bro? Tell you how to manage your money again. Welcome to Brown Ambition. This is the hard part when you pay down those credit cards. If you haven't gotten to the bottom of why you were racking up credit or turning to credit cards,

you may just recreate the same problem a year from now. When you do feel like you are bleeding from these high interest rates, I would start shopping for a debt consolidation loan, starting with your local credit union, shopping around online, looking for some online lenders because they tend to have fewer fees and be more affordable. Listen, I am not here to judge.

It is so expensive in these streets. I 100% can see how in just a few months you can have this much credit card debt and it weighs on you. It's really easy to just like stick your head in the sand. It's nice and dark in the sand. Even if it's scary, it's not going to go away just because you're avoiding it.

And in fact, it may get even worse. For more judgment-free money advice, listen to Brown Ambition on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Hola, it's Honey German. And my podcast, Grasias Come Again, is back. This season, we're going even deeper into the world of music and entertainment

with raw and honest conversations with some of your favorite Latin artists and celebrities. You didn't have to audition? No, I didn't audition. I haven't auditioned in like over 25 years. Oh, wow. That's a real G-talk right there. Oh, yeah.

We've got some of the biggest actors, musicians, content creators, and culture shifters sharing their real stories of failure and success. You were destined to be a start. We talk all about what's viral and trending with a little bit of chisement, a lot of laughs, and those amazing vibras you've come to expect. And of course, we'll explore deeper topics dealing with identity, struggles, and all the issues affecting our Latin community. You feel like you get a little whitewash because you have to do the code switching?

I won't say whitewash because at the end of the day, you know, I'm me. But the whole pretending and code, you know, it takes a toll on you. Listen to the new season of Grasas Has Come Again as part of My Cultura Podcast Network on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. That's how stars are born. just in Hollywood and they uh and then it just keeps burning for a long time right until all the hydrogen turns into helium yeah that's exactly right you have fuel and you burn that fuel and when you're done burning that fuel you're done but the interesting thing is that the output of fusion

is helium right uh-huh but and so what happens is that you accumulate helium at the core of these stars and then if it keeps going if it gets big enough then it can start to fuse helium oh and then that But it's like it goes into secondary fuel burning mode. Yeah, exactly. It's burning helium because you can fuse helium into the element with number four, which I embarrassing can't even remember. Is that lithium? Okay, so we're talking about what happens to a star.

And at some point, it turns all the hydrogen into helium and eventually into iron. And that's kind of when a supernova happens, right? Yeah, well, it doesn't necessarily happen to have to be a supernova. It depends on the mass of the star. And so let's talk just to be specific about a star like ours, you know, the sun. Okay. And any object that's like about up to eight times the mass of the sun is going to have an experience like our sun.

And so what happens is it starts to burn hydrogen, like we said. And then the core gets burned up and you get helium. And then you start to burn the hydrogen on the shell. And then the star starts to grow. It gets bigger, like physically larger in space. I mean, the reason is that you're now burning the hydrogen on the outside and that the burning there is pushing stuff out. It's like the radiation pressure is making it grow.

So the sun will keep burning, and then it'll expand, and it'll cool. So it'll start to get larger, and it'll turn to a red giant. So giant, meaning it gets bigger and red because it changes color. Because the color is related to the temperature, right? Like the cooler it is, the red. Like, it's kind of counterintuitive. The colder it is, the star is, the redder it is. But then the hotter it is, the bluer it looks, right?

Yeah, and that's related to the wavelength. of that light, yeah. Yeah. Like if you could fast forward life on Earth, you would see the sun is this yellow dot, but eventually you'll see it grow

and grow and grow redder. And then grow and grow and grow and grow. Eventually we'll take over our entire sky and at some point it'll just snuff us out. That's right. Eventually we will be in the sun.

Wow. Earth will just get like eaten up by the sun. Yeah, exactly. But that's billion, again, billions of years in the future. It's like three billion years in the future.

Three billion years. Yeah, and so before, but before we even get snuffed up, you know, it'll get pretty hot, and we wouldn't want to be around anyway. Oh, I see. So first, the oceans boil, and then we get snuffed up, yeah. Wow. And then that's like the last phase before the sun dies, and then it's mostly used of its fuel. And, you know, it's like a fire. You use up the fuel, and then the fire goes out.

So everything turned to iron? Maybe. I mean, it's not every star that can make iron, right? It depends on the size of it. Mostly iron is made in much bigger stars. Okay. So our star is not big enough to make iron. So we'll probably make helium and a little bit of lithium and a few other things.

Oh, I see. So some stars are bigger so they have more pressure so they can cook iron, but ours cannot. Exactly. Ours is not by far one of the biggest stars in the universe. It's relatively modest, yeah. Okay. And then when it burns off all the hydrogen sort of on the outside, then it'll go out. And what we'll be left with is something they call a white dwarf, which is basically just meaning a big, cool,

blob, something that's not burning anymore. Of what? It's just sort of the leftover stuff. You know, you have enough elements there to sit there. It's hot, and so it's sort of glowing, but it's not actually burning anymore. You'll have some helium and maybe some lithium and just be like a dense blob,

but it won't be bright the same way. And it'll cool and eventually become a black dwarf, which means basically a big lump of rock. Like just a giant meteorite. Yeah, though mostly made of like frozen helium. Frozen helium, for real? Yeah. Yeah, because mostly what the sun is, is burning hydrogen into helium.

And again, some of that helium will get burned into heavier stuff, but most of it won't, I think. And so this is going to be like a giant ice ball the size of what? Oh, it'll be small. Yeah, it'll be smaller than the current sun. Oh, I see. It's just the core. Yeah, just the core is left over because all the other stuff is blown out when it turns into a red giant. But yeah, some significant fraction of the mass of the sun is going to end up left over as a white dwarf and then a black dwarf.

Yeah, exactly. And, you know, that has a future. It could be that that then gets clustered together later on and becomes part of a new star. You know, a lot of the stuff that's in our star and in the earth used to be inside of a star. And so, you know, everything that we're made out of is a remnant from a star that died. So if it wasn't for stars and these fusion furnaces making the heavier elements, then there wouldn't be anything else to make stuff out of. It would all just be hydrogen and helium.

And so it's gravity squeezing this stuff together over billions of years. that makes the heavier elements and mostly in the bigger stars that you get up to like iron. You know, the bigger stars can do more exciting stuff. Like, our sun is not going to go supernova. It's just not big enough.

But a bigger star could have enough mass that it collapses and it pushes it together and it can create a supernova. And then two weird things, either a black hole or a neutron star, which I think is one of the weirdest things in the universe. So it's more of an implosion

than an explosion, actually. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's pretty crazy stuff. So you're saying that's when that's when the heavier elements get neat, right? Yeah, in some of these supernovas, because you have heavy

stuff flying around and it collides, and it forms even heavier stuff, yeah. But the heaviest stuff, like we were saying earlier, gold and all that stuff, gets formed when two of those remnants collide. Like say, you have one really massive star, lives its whole

life, has a great time, blows up, turns into a neutron star, and another one does the same thing, and then the two neutron stars are orbiting each other, and eventually, because they're so massive, they pull each other together and they collapse and they collide into each other. And it's in that collision that you can form the really heaviest stuff. So all the super heavy metals in the universe are made when neutron stars die.

Wow. And that's where they're so rare is that you need these crazy events just to make gold and titanium and all these elements, right? Yeah, that's right. But it's crazy that we have that stuff on Earth, yeah, right? I know. We have it here on Earth. And it's like the leftovers, these incredible cosmic events that happened billions of years ago. and then got sprayed out into the universe with enough time for then to have a whole new life. I love that everything in the universe is getting recycled, right?

Our solar system didn't even start forming until, you know, 5 billion years ago, which was 9 billion years into the party, right? Yeah, let's talk about that. But first, let's take a quick break. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious. Oh, wait a minute, Sam. maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon.

This person writes, my boyfriend has been hanging out with his young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her. Now, he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone. Now, hold up. Isn't that against school policy? That sounds totally inappropriate. Well, according to this person, this is her boyfriend's former professor, and they're the same age. And it's even more likely that they're cheating.

He insists there's nothing between them. I mean, do you believe him? Well, he's certainly trying to get this person to believe him because he now wants them both to meet. So, do we find out if this person's boyfriend really cheated with his professor or not? To hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. December 29th, 1975, LaGuardia Airport. The holiday rush, parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys. Then, at 6.33 p.m., everything changed.

There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal. Apparently, the explosion actually impelled metal glass. The injured were being loaded into ambulances, just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged, and it was here to stay. Terrorism. Law and order, criminal justice system is, Back. In season two, we're turning our focus to a threat that hides in plain sight. That's harder to predict and even harder to stop. Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hola, it's HoneyGerman. And my podcast, Grasasas Come Again, is back. This season, we're going even deeper into the world of music and entertainment.

With raw and honest conversations with some of your favorite Latin artists and celebrities. You didn't have to audition? No, I didn't audition. I haven't audition in like over 25 years. Oh, wow. That's a real G-talk right there. Oh, yeah. We've got some of the biggest actors, musicians, content creators, and culture shifters

sharing their real stories of failure and success. You were destined to be a start. We talked all about what's viral and trending with a little bit of chisement, a lot of laughs and those amazing vivas you've come to expect. And of course, we'll explore deeper topics dealing with identity, struggles, and all the issues affecting our Latin community. You feel like you get a little whitewash because you have to do the code switching? I won't say whitewash because at the end of the day, you know, I'm me.

But the whole pretending and cold, you know, it takes a toll on you. Listen to the new season of Grasasasas Come Again as part of My Cultura Podcast Network on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. A foot washed up. a shoe with some bones in it. They had no idea who it was. Most everything was burned up pretty good from the fire that not a whole lot was salvageable.

These are the coldest of cold cases, but everything is about to change. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA. Right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime. A small lab in Texas is cracking the code on DNA. Using new scientific tools, they're finding clues in evidence so tiny you might just miss it.

He never thought he was going to get caught. And I just looked at my computer screen. I was just like, ah, gotcha. On America's Crime Lab, we'll learn about victims and survivors. And you'll meet the team behind the scenes at Othrum, the Houston Lab that takes on the most hopeless cases to finally solve the unsolvable. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, sis. What if I could promise you you never had to listen to a condescending finance, bro, tell you how to manage your money again. Welcome to Brown Ambition. This is the hard part when you pay down those credit cards. If you haven't gotten to the bottom of why you were racking up credit or turning to credit cards, you may just recreate the same problem a year from now. When you do feel like you are bleeding from these high interest rates, I would start shopping for a debt consolidation loan, starting with your local credit union, shopping around online, looking for some online lenders. they tend to have fewer fees and be more affordable.

Listen, I am not here to judge. It is so expensive in these streets. I 100% can see how in just a few months you can have this much credit card debt and it weighs on you. It's really easy to just like stick your head in the sand. It's nice and dark in the sand. Even if it's scary, it's not going to go away

just because you're avoiding it. And in fact, it may get even worse. For more judgment-free money advice, listen to Brown Ambition on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Right now is when the sun is like looking over that hot, sexy sun in the next solar system. Looking to buy a corvette, right? Yeah, it's wondering, like, do I look like a big, fat, red giant?

Tell me, I still look small, like a nice little yellow dwarf. Tell me I'm still hot. Yeah, exactly. And one thing that I think is really interesting is that the smaller star is the longer it lives. The bigger star is, the shorter it lives. And the first stars in the universe were massive. They were incredible. And so they didn't live for very long.

Like those first stars we talked about, none of those are around anymore. None of the stars that are in the universe now are first generation stars. They're all second, third, fourth generation, that kind of stuff. All the stars were seen in the night sky in like the pictures of galaxies. They're all. None of those are among the first stars that were formed, about 100 million years after the Big Bang. Yeah, it's only recently people, scientists even saw the light from those first stars. hard to see. You have to use

the infrared because the universe was so dense back then. But yeah, our star is made out of leftover bits from other stars earlier that burned and exploded and... Wow. And recombined, right? And eventually you're saying our big ice ball of a sun is going to recombine with something else

maybe and form... But you can't do this forever. You know, like there's a limited amount of hydrogen and you need hydrogen to have these reactions. To start it. Eventually, things get... Yeah, things get denser and denser, and you run out of fuel. So, like, think about the Milky Way galaxy.

It's got enormous blobs of hydrogen gas still. It's still making stars. But eventually, it's going to run out, and then it's going to stop making stars. And those stars are going to burn for a while, but they're not going to burn forever. So eventually, everything's going to be, like, iron and heavier metals. Yeah, yeah, and then things will get dark. Things are going to get rocky. Things are going to get rocky.

That's right. But some of these stars, some of these stars are going to burn a long time. Like, there are stars that have lifetimes of trillions of years. But that's not us. So in five billion years, we got to figure something out. Yeah. We have to figure out how to find, get to another star, and we got less than, you know, three-ish billion years to figure that out.

Oh, man. So we have to jump to another star that is burning and or just learn to live in dark, kind of, right? Well, you know, fusion is not impossible. You know, we can copy the energy. source of the stars. If we don't necessarily need a star, right? We could power ourselves through our own controlled fusion if we could figure that out. But do we have enough hydrogen or water to last us that long?

Yeah. I mean, the sun is massively inefficient, right? Like most of the energy the sun gets thrown off into space and not even use. So we wouldn't need anything nearly as big as the sun to power human civilization. So we could just go out there, grab some of that hydrogen floating around, or go to Jupiter, maybe, grab all that hydrogen and create our little mini sun here. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Or, you know, if you're living out in space, you don't have to worry about pollution.

Like, so you can just do fission, which is much easier. And there's plenty of that stuff floating around. And, you know, you get radioactive waste. You just jettison it. You're already in space. So who cares, right? Interesting. People used to think the ocean was too big and you could just pollute it forever without consequences.

We know that's not true. But it is true of the universe. You say that now? We're never going to fill the universe with garbage. Yeah. You think in a billion years, people are going to say, I can't believe they have. filled space with junk, man. Yeah.

You're going to be like, don't throw plastic bags on into space because the space dolphins are going to... It kills all those cute space animals. Space dolphins. Space dolphins choking on your cosmic ways. Why is that funny? I don't think that's funny

at all, and I think you're a jerk for laughing. Yeah, sorry. Cool. Well, that's kind of interesting, the idea that maybe we'll never leave our solar system. Maybe we'll just figure out how to make our own little mini suns to keep us warm. Yeah, absolutely. I think we could do

that. Right. Until then, I guess wear a sunscreen. That's right. And don't worry too much about the sun burning out. We have bigger problems to figure out than whether the sun is going to explode. You've got lots of time to work on that problem. Do you have a question you wish we

would cover? Send it to us. We'd love to hear from you. You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Daniel and Jorge, one word, or email us to feedback at danielandhorpe.com. Ah, come on. Why is this taking so long? This thing is ancient. Still using yesterday's tech, upgrade to the think pad X1 carbon, ultra-light, ultra-powerful, and build. for serious productivity with Intel Core Ultra processors, blazing speed

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