Death of the Sun

Death of the Sun

2006, Science  -   12 Comments
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Ratings: 7.64/10 from 55 users.

The Sun sustains all life on our planet. As we frolic and bask under the warmth of its glow, little do we realize how it may one day have the power to destroy us as well. Death of the Sun, produced by the renowned Naked Science series, outlines the birth and potential demise of the most formidable star in our solar system.

The aging process is rarely kind to any living thing. But in the case of the Sun, the diminishing returns of old age could mean disaster for our entire planet. Our technologies would be rendered useless, plant life would wither without nourishment, and mankind could be rocked by a power akin to a global nuclear explosion.

"All stars have a limited lifetime," warns astrologer Donald Brownlee early in the film. In order to determine the Sun's life expectancy, scientists must first discover how old it is. Until recently, collecting the samples necessary to make this determination has proven impossible amidst such a volatile and scorching celestial environment. As detailed in the film, scientists eventually uncovered an ingenious method for arriving at this calculation, and it involved the capturing of atoms from the Sun's energy force, a free-falling parachute, and the daredevil heroics of a Hollywood stunt pilot.

The research doesn't stop there. The filmmakers visit various institutes across the United States, and interview key players who operate on the forefront of this field of study. One researcher reveals how energy emanates from the Sun's core, and manages to overcome enormous obstacles to reach us here on Earth. An astrophysicist calls upon the science of sound to pinpoint the Sun's age with even greater precision. Space weather forecasters examine the Sun's most violent episodes throughout recent history, and keep constant watch for any further activities that could disrupt our way of life.

The Sun might be 93 million miles away from us, but its relevance to our daily existence couldn't be more immediate. Death of the Sun may seem like a fantastical what-if scenario from a big budget disaster film. But for many scientists, it's not a question of if, but when.

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Paul
Paul
3 years ago

Who wrote this? "All stars have a limited lifetime," warns astrologer Donald Brownlee" hold on a moment: Donald Brownlee is an Astronomer NOT an astrologer at the University of Washington.

blah
blah
5 years ago

@Dustup, take your meds already ....

DustUp
DustUp
5 years ago

@Pgetty; Clearly far too many limit their input to what the major media limits, edits, and pushes upon them, misnaming it news and information. Did you believe all the fear mongering nonsense Al Gore spewed forth and made mega bucks from? Which has been proved wrong. It was based on projections of manipulated computer modeling (garbage in = garbage out) not actual measurements.

Did you know its difficult for scientists on the govt dole to get funding unless they can SCARE funding out of congress? That the NSF doesn't fund you unless you are with their fictional global warming agenda as we enter into the next global cooling era.

It would seem the small minds are those eagerly willing to suck up anything and defend lies and fiction they bought into, rather than doing further investigations.

Science is a tool of discovery. Much like those using an adjustable (Crescent) wrench for a hammer, far too many so called scientists misuse "science". Ever heard of "junk science" or "science Fiction"? Yet people for some reason are conditioned to believe most anything some authoritative sounding so called scientist who has no problem with fear mongering as long as they get paid.

On the opposite side of the coin are so called scientists and media willing to discredit actual scientists like Pons and Fleischmann regarding their Cold Fusion discoveries. Now called LENR, they have been vindicated time and again but you never hear about it.

Why should I believe some "scientist" if I have reasonable doubts as to their ability to calculate something accurately? Just because you buy into fiction makes me small minded? It would seem the opposite is true.

ammar
ammar
6 years ago

it is a cool documentary

Pgetty
Pgetty
6 years ago

@dustup found the Trump supporter!

Assume you're a troll. If not, wow. What a small mind you have!

Jay Steff
Jay Steff
6 years ago

lets talk as they have and say that at 7:00 the moon pulled away from the earth and the giant tidal waves and lack of balance thrown us out into the solar system out of control.......
so long before the earth is incinerated by by the sun, we are toast anyway.
Now did either of those calamities get us before our SUV's caused enough global warming to finish us off?
Obama, Al, help us out here......

DustUp
DustUp
7 years ago

Fear mongering.

I'd like to know how anyone knows much of anything about the sun. Have they been there? Did they send a probe? For all I know what we see when we look up and have been misled to believe is a burning ball of gas, is actually a sort of porthole through which photons pass. So sayeth some independent scientists who I would be more inclined to believe than a govt or govt "educa-shun" system.

I've also read that all those distances from Earth to the sun, moon, and planets, appearing so accurately in some science textbooks ...all wrong based on wrong assumptions about gravity.

Personally I have no problem saying I don't know and leave it at that. Physicists who forthrightly in an authoritative manner claiming they do know, are forthrightly full of pooh.

Just because someone was taught something and passed that on, repeat, means what? Like many notions of yesteryear that have been obliterated over time, why is it so important to believe into or sound authoritative this time? Ego maniacs playhouse called science.

One reason is to make you feel insignificant so it doesn't matter so much if a few or a lot of you mere ants get squashed. However, the human soul-spirit is a precious thing. Stand up for your right to be, to live, to create, to excel, to make a wiser world rather than a slave world run by the self proclaimed elite.

LeeJai Cook
LeeJai Cook
7 years ago

December 21, 2016. LeeJai Cook, Roaring Springs, Texas USA.
Thank you very much for posting these videos!

Relax! Our sun is good for another 25 billion years!
From THE URANTIA BOOK:
41:9.5 Your own sun has long since attained relative equilibrium between its
expansion and contraction cycles, those disturbances which produce the gigantic
pulsations of many of the younger stars. Your sun is now passing out of its six
billionth year. At the present time it is functioning through the period of
greatest economy. It will shine on as of present efficiency for more than
twenty-five billion years. It will probably experience a partially efficient
period of decline as long as the combined periods of its youth and stabilized
function.
15:6.4 The trillions upon trillions of years that an ordinary sun will continue
to give out heat and light well illustrates the vast store of energy which each
unit of matter contains. The actual energy stored in these invisible particles
of physical matter is well-nigh unimaginable. And this energy becomes almost
wholly available as light when subjected to the tremendous heat pressure and the
associated energy activities which prevail in the interior of the blazing suns.

SUN DENSITY
41:4.1 The mass of your sun is slightly greater than the estimate of your
physicists, who have reckoned it as about two octillion (2 x 1027) tons. [Note: Be
sure that the “27” is shown as Superscript so that it reads “10 to the 27th power.”]
It now exists about halfway between the most dense and the most diffuse stars,
having about one and one-half times the density of water. But your sun is neither a
liquid nor a solid—it is gaseous—and this is true notwithstanding the difficulty
of explaining how gaseous matter can attain this and even much greater
densities.
41:7.2 The surface temperature of your sun is almost 6,000 degrees, but it
rapidly increases as the interior is penetrated until it attains the
unbelievable height of about 35,000,000 degrees in the central regions. (All of
these temperatures refer to your Fahrenheit scale.)

Martin Hedington
Martin Hedington
7 years ago

Perhaps the OP confused the term with Galaxy. Ours containing over 200 Billion of them.

mysterioso
mysterioso
7 years ago

The doc description reads... "...potential demise of the most formidable star in our solar system." Uh, I think its the only star in our solar system.