Where did we come from?

Nuclear chemist Cole Pruitt explains what Nuclear Pasta is and how we were all born inside the core of giant stars.

 

Where Does The Sun Get Its Energy?

The sun has been producing light for about five billion years but where does all its energy come from? The most common idea is that the sun is burning gas - like a giant fireball in the sky. If this were true, the sun would have gone out long ago. So how is the sun actually fuelling itself? It is converting its own mass into energy. By combining protons (the nucleus of hydrogen) into helium, it squeezes some mass into energy - 4.3 billion kg per second. It is Einstein's famous E=mc^2 which gives us the quantitative relationship between mass and energy, where c is the speed of light.

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Creating the Elements - Sixty Symbols

How do stars and supernovae create the elements.

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How the Sun works: Fusion and Quantum Tunneling

In this episode, we learn about how the sun can burn for billions of years without running out of fuel.

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Fission and Fusion

Documentary explaining fusion and fission, by Cassiopeia Project.

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TED Talks: Steven Cowley: Fusion is energy's future

Physicist Steven Cowley is certain that nuclear fusion is the only truly sustainable solution to the fuel crisis. He explains why fusion will work and talks about the projects that he and many others have devoted their lives to, working against the clock to create a new source of energy.

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