All language subtitles for The Planets Series 1 5of8 Star 1080p HDTV MVGroup

In 1973, nine astronauts
were sent to live and

work in the world's first
space station, SkyLab.

Their mission was to observe
the Sun, free from the Earth's

distorting atmosphere.

The astronauts witnessed what
no human beings had ever

seen before: a sun more
powerful than anyone

could have imagined.

To our ancestors, the sky was
an unfathomable mystery.

At night, it was brimming with
pinpoints of light: stars.

Then there was the Sun.

Its arrival in the morning
caused those stars to vanish,

and miraculously brought warmth and light.

It was seen as the giver
of life, the first god.

This is the story of mankind's
struggle to see behind

the glare, and glimpse
the truth about the Sun,

how we came to understand
the scope of its power,

and its role in the Universe.

In February, 1998, the
Caribbean island of Guadelupe

prepared for a rare celestial event.

For a few brief minutes, day
would become night during a

total eclipse of the Sun.

This was Francisco Diego's tenth eclipse.

As a young boy in Mexico, he
was deeply affected by the

first one he saw.

It started a lifelong
fascination with the Sun.

The Sun was perceived as
the immaculate, gold disc,

perfect, it was perfection,
it was a religious belief,

because everything was perfect
in the sky, and the Sun was

the most perfect circle in
the sky, with no blemishes,

no structure, just a perfect,
flat disc, golden disc.

And it was the Sun god
for many, many religions

in the world.

The Sun remained a symbol
of perfection until

a 17th century Florentine
called Galileo first pointed a

telescope at the sky and
found that that idea might

just be wrong.

What Galileo did was apply
the telescope for the first

time, and discover that
the Sun was not perfect.

That the Sun have sunspots, and
that was a major revolution

in philosophy and of course, in science.

Over several weeks, Galileo watched the

sunspots move across the surface
of the Sun, and realized

that it was spinning.

Galileo's discovery completely
changed ideas about the Sun.

But although he spent the
rest of his life studying it,

he never saw anything more.

The blinding light of the
Sun made further scientific

observation very difficult.

But there were moments, provided
the scientists chose them

carefully, when it was possible to cheat

the Sun's dazzling rays.

Roughly three times every
decade, somewhere in the world,

the Moon passes directly
in front of the Sun.

It offers a rare and special opportunity.

If the Sun was this big, the
Earth would be a little ball

of about three or four millimeters
in diameter, and the Moon

is even smaller than that.

The Moon is only a quarter
of the size of the Earth,

so the Moon is four hundred
times smaller than the Sun.

But the fantastic coincidence
is that the Sun is 400 times

farther away than the Moon from us.

So we see both of them, by
coincidence, more or less

the same size.

One minute!

For four hours, Francisco watched the Moon

creep into position.

No theatres!

He'd come halfway around the world to watch

just four minutes of total eclipse.

But even if you are in the
right place at the right time,

there's never any guarantee of success.

In the end, Francisco got
just a few moments to glimpse

the hidden Sun.

We lost it.

No corona.

Then, to his huge disappointment,

he was thwarted as the clouds rolled in

to wreck his eclipse.

Douglas Gough is a leading solar scientist.

To see his first total eclipse,
he traveled to Indonesia.

The Indonesian government had
declared it to be illegal

to watch the eclipse, at
least for the Indonesians.

They had either to watch it on television,

or to go to the mosque and
pray for the dragon to spit

the Sun out again.

Which is what they
believed was taking place.

I was standing at the end
of a road on my own,

and a little boy came up
to me, had be watching me.

About three years old.

And I gave him some dark film,

to look at the Sun through,

and then an old man of about
70, who turned out to be

the head of the village, came
too, and the three of us

saw this fantastic eclipse.

A total eclipse reveals the Sun's corona,

an outer layer normally lost in the glare.

A very eerie feeling, and
almost total silence;

the birds stopped singing.

And the only thing we could
hear in the distance was the

chanting from the mosques.

This is what early astronomers traveled

the world to see.

Within the corona were what
looked like burning clouds.

It seemed that the surface of
the Sun was smothered in a

turbulent, raging atmosphere.

Well, you realize, when
you see these things

moving, that the Sun is active.

It's not just a quiet, passive
ball of gas, but it's

churning away; interesting
things are happening.

Seeing anything for the
first time is exciting.

That's why explorers on Earth
would explore parts of the

Earth where no man had been before.

There's very little left of
the Earth now to do that,

so we go elsewhere in the Universe.

Seeing the Sun, peeling
off a layer of mist,

a lack of understanding, and
suddenly seeing how something

works is an amazing
experience when you see this

for the first time.

For more than 200 years,
scientists had only

fleeting chances to study these
unique views of the Sun.

Then, in the middle of the
19th century, father Angelo

Secchi, the Vatican's chief
astronomer, found himself

at the forefront of a revolution
in how we looked at light.

Through an observatory
above his church in Rome,

he pioneered the use of a new
branch of science called

spectroscopy.

Secchi's spectroscope split
sunlight into its different

colors, then magnified the
light from just one region.

What the discovered at the edge
of the Sun was a revelation.

Spectroscopy revealed a
complexity that would have

astonished Galileo.

What had happened is that
you were no longer dazzled

by most of the light from the Sun;

you could see something else.

You could see the kinds of
things that you can see at the

edge of the Sun during an
eclipse when you're no longer

dazzled by the light from the Sun.

Astronomers could now study not just the

edges, but the body of the Sun.

Galileo's sunspots were
revealed as Earth-sized tears

in the surface, like windows
on a mysterious interior.

The surface itself bubbled
before their eyes.

Soon, they were able to identify
the chemicals that made up

the Sun.

Dark bands in its spectrum
revealed the presence

of hydrogen, calcium, iron,
and astronomers discovered

an alien element, completely
unknown on Earth.

They named it after Helios,
the Greek Sun god: Helium.

In 1862, Father Secchi turned
his spectroscope to the night

sky to see what stars were made of.

He recognized the pattern
of chemicals immediately.

They were all but identical to the Sun.

One of the great mysteries of
the heavens had been resolved.

Our Sun was a star.

The religious implications
of Secchi's discovery were

profound, but what troubled
the church was a huge step

forward for astronomers.

The Sun was one of those stars,
and so now, for the first

time, one realized that the Sun
was a member of the family

of stars, but from a scientific
point of view, that's

fantastic, because we want to
know what most of the Universe

is like, and so, by studying
the Sun, we can study

a typical star.

By the late 1940s, rockets
were going beyond

the Earth's atmosphere.

Scientists discovered that
the fringes of space were

scorched with radiation.

It seemed that while our
atmosphere allowed heat and light

to pass through, it was
shielding us from x-rays, gamma

rays, and ultraviolet light
that had to be coming

from the Sun.

Alexei Leonov was the first
man to brave this dangerous

radiation and come face
to face with a star.

Then, in 1973, the first
solar space laboratory was

launched, but the project
almost ended in disaster.

When SkyLab was launched, it
had a heat shield wrapped

around it that was to open
up after it got into orbit,

and what happened was 60
seconds into the flight,

that heat shield popped open,
and of course, it's still

in the air stream, and so the
air stream tore the heat

shield off, and when it did that,

it unlocked both solar wings.

Commander Pete Conrad had already walked

on the Moon when he was
chosen to lead the first crew

on SkyLab.

But their new home was no longer
protected by an atmosphere,

and inside, temperatures started to soar.

Their first job was to
find some way of shielding

the damaged station from the
worst of the Sun's rays.

Right away, on day one, we
went in and got this temporary

heat shield rigged, which we
were able to rig from inside.

We were able to put it out
through one of the air locks.

We were able to push, just
like an umbrella, a pole

and mylar sheets that then
popped open like an umbrella,

and then we were able to pull
it back into where it was

just offset by just a few
inches off the side, and it did

take care of the heating problem.

Temperature began to go down immediately.

As the temperatures finally dropped

to safe levels, the crew made their way

into the observatory.

Their next task was to get
to grips with life in a

weightless environment.

Initially, nausea prevented
all but the toughest from

eating, but the problem soon
passed, and within a few days,

space didn't seem such
a bad place after all.

And then, with no distorting
atmosphere to blur their

sights, the most comprehensive
solar observation

in history began.

The SkyLab flight is very
near and dear to my heart.

I know a lot of people don't
understand that it probably

means more to me than going
to the Moon, and of course,

part of that was being able
to run the solar telescope

and know that we were bringing
back a tremendous amount

of information that nobody ever had before

in any great quantities.

And to begin with, when I
switch to the new position

called H-Album, these words
stand for hydrogen album,

and they are called hydrogen
because the light that we see

comes from light radiated by hydrogen atoms

in the Sun's atmosphere.

Viewing the Sun with the same wavelengths

of light used by Secchi more
than 100 years earlier,

the SkyLab astronauts
saw incredible details

on the Sun's surface.

For example we can see
sunspots, we can see network,

we can see filaments, all
these things on the Sun,

in great detail.

Each one of us took a
four-hour turn at the solar

telescope panel.

Now, I've always related that
to playing three 88-keyboard

pianos at the same time.

It was a very complicated set
of switching and everything.

It was very involved and
very intense, and you'd work

real hard during that time
frame, making sure those

sequences ran the right way.

And then things would come up
in real time, like a solar

flare all of a sudden.

So we had to be prepared
to catch that, also.

Solar flares are planet-sized eruptions

of boiling gas that somehow
break free of the Sun.

They had been seen from
Earth, but never in such

extraordinary detail.

If somebody else was running
it, they might call us,

and we could go up and take a look also.

So that happened quite frequently,
when something really

unusual came up that we could
witness, we would call

the other guys up, let
them come take a peek.

In nine months, successive SkyLab crews

took more than 160,000 images,
revealing aspects of the Sun

that had never been known before.

The most spectacular discoveries
were the coronal mass

ejections, outbursts of material on a scale

that dwarfed solar flares.

These were the best views
yet of the turbulent Sun.

But why were the coronal
mass ejections so much more

powerful than the solar flares?

The key lay with Galileo's sunspots.

Before the dawn of the space
age, the summit of the

San Gabriel mountains was
as close as it was possible

for an American to get to space.

In 1903, George Ellery Hale,
the son of a wealthy engineer,

had a dream.

He would indulge his passion
for astronomy by building

the world's most advanced
solar observatory high above

the town of Pasadena.

Sallie Baliunas is an astrophysicist

at the Mount Wilson Observatory.

Hale is my personal hero.

He was not only a great
scientist, he had instinct

about engineering, so he could
build the largest telescopes

in the world so successfully,
he raised a lot of money

to do these projects, something
scientists always have to

do, and as he often said
himself, he made no small plans.

The route to the top of Mt.
Wilson wasn't easy.

This road wasn't built
until 1936, so all the

tons of concrete and steel had
to be brought up by backpack,

or by mule train, on a very
steep seven mile trail

up the side of the mountain.

The pack horses had to make over 60 trips

to transport the telescope alone.

But Hale soon had an
observatory that was the envy

of the world.

Hale's first challenge was to
understand the Sun's oldest

known feature: sunspots.

Hale built a spectrograph,
which is beneath this table.

75 feet below is a grating
that disperses the light

of the Sun into its energy components.

The grating would look like this.

And would break up the sunlight
into its different colors,

and buried in this spectrum
are the absorption lines

of the gases of the Sun.

With his unique spectrograph,
Hale set about,

analyzing the surface of the Sun.

He was able to take photographs
of sunspots, in more detail

than anyone had ever achieved before.

But it was during a study of
the chemical absorption lines

of the Sun's surface that Hale
made a profound discovery.

When he looked at the
quieter part of the Sun,

he saw ordinary looking
absorption lines, and then,

as the sunspot rolled into
the slit, the lines began

to broaden a little bit, and then split.

As Hale saw the lines split apart,

he instantly recognized the phenomenon.

Voila.

Magnetic fields.

He could see it.

June, 1908.

In that instant, Hale had unraveled

one of the Sun's greatest mysteries.

Sunspots were caused by
magnetic distortion.

These distortions are some
4,000 times greater than the

Earth's magnetic field.

They hold back the gases
rising up, cooling the surface

by 2,000 degrees, and
causing the dark spots.

So a sunspot, on the surface,

is nothing more than a twisted
and kinked magnetic field,

looped out of the surface.

This magnetogram shows how the surface

of the Sun is speckled with
positive and negative lines

of magnetic force.

These field lines channel the Sun's storms;

eruptions of plasma, which
explode outwards for thousands

of kilometers, before being dragged back

into its boiling surface.

Coronal mass ejections and prominences,

everything we see on the
surface of the Sun,

all the dynamical features,
are all magnetic in nature.

In one of the coldest places on Earth,

some 15 years before Hale
started his investigation

into the sun, a scientist
in Norway had drawn his own

extraordinary conclusions
about the Sun's magnetism.

In a land where scientists
cannot see the Sun for months

on end, he was convinced that
you could still feel its

presence in one of the most
beautiful natural phenomena

on Earth.

It may be strange to see why
we are out here, far to

the North, on top of a snowy
roof, in the darkness,

when you're dealing with the Sun.

But here, you see the Aurora,
the Northern Lights.

I really like to see the
Aurora of a dark sky.

It's a beautiful sight,
and many strange colors,

which you do not see in any other place.

It really lights up this
dark days that we have here

in the North, in Wintertime.

Earlier, it was often thought
the Northern Lights were

the souls of dead soldiers fighting.

Norway is one of the
best places in the world

to study Auroras.

Truls Hansen monitors the
radioactivity high in the

Earth's atmosphere.

It's an area of research that
goes back over a century.

100 years ago, Norway's most
famous scientist dedicated

his life to the study of
these strange atmospheric

disturbances; his name was Dr.
Kristian Birkeland.

Birkeland was certainly
brilliant, but all the little

bit mad, and you might see that
from his book here, really.

This book you will find
not only the theories

about particles and Aurora,
but you will find a lot

of ideas; some of them were
right, most of them are wrong.

And one of them was in his
terella, which we see clearly

here, was a vacuum chamber
with a small globe pretending

the Earth inside it.

And we can also see Birkeland
himself on the side here,

controlling the experiment.

Birkeland's most celebrated experiment

artificially created the
Northern Lights, and to protect

his brain from radiation,
bizarrely, he always wore a fez.

Odd as he may have appeared,
Birkeland's theories about the

origin of Auroras stemmed from
years of dedicated study.

The Northern Lights were known
to be particularly energetic

following a period of solar activity.

Birkeland wanted to try
and find a mechanism

that linked the two.

These are the old magnetometers,
which we are operate...

Have been operating here for
more than hundred years,

and are still used some
places around the world.

And Birkeland, he used
very similar instruments.

We have here a recording of
the magnetic field during

one day, taken with this instrument.

It starts rather quiet
around noon, and then here,

in the evening, we get a
sort of attack, and we get

a magnetic storm, which you
see very clearly here,

and during this period, we
also have a large Aurora,

very bright Aurora.

What we see here is the
so-called Birkeland terella

experiment, he built several
of this kind, but this is the

biggest one, and the last one I
suppose, being made in 1913.

It's really a large vacuum chamber,

with a model of the Earth inside.

Birkeland's hunch was
that the magnetic storms

which accompanied the
Northern Lights were caused

by a stream of electrically
charged particles buffeting

the Earth's magnetic field.

He believed that these
particles had to be coming

from the Sun.

But other scientists never
followed up his ideas.

In 1917, Birkeland committed suicide.

In fact, evidence for the
extraordinary power of the Sun

had been visible to humans
for thousands of years.

Chinese astronomers noted
that the tails of comets

always pointed directly away from sunlight.

It was assumed that the trail
of dust was being pushed

away by the gentle pressure of the Sun.

But in 1947, a German
physicist, Ludwig Biermann,

calculated that something far
more substantial than sunlight

had to be pushing the tails of comets.

He called it "solar corpuscular
radiation," but his idea

was widely rejected by scientists.

Despite the general derision,
a physicist from Chicago

called Eugene Parker believed
there might be something

in Biermann's argument.

I had a particularly good
chance to talk with him

when he was visiting Chicago.

He pointed out that if
it isn't the sunlight,

there is only one other
possibility, and that is the

solar corpuscular radiation,
the emission of particles

from the Sun, that interacts
with the tail and blows

it away from the Sun.

His revelations about the
comet tails really got to me,

and I realized he had a fundamental point.

The eminent physicist Sydney Chapman

was particularly eager to attack Biermann.

He pointed out that the volume
of the Sun was 330,000 times

greater than the earth, and that
no particle, however small,

could escape its enormous
gravitational pull.

Dismissing Biermann's ideas
about solar wind, Chapman

was interested in researching
a quite different area:

examining how the Sun's corona worked.

He suggested that the corona,
though still firmly bound

to the Sun, stretched much
further than could be seen

during the solar eclipse.

Eugene Parker met Sydney
Chapman at an observatory

in Boulder, Colorado.

Coming home from Boulder, I
was thinking about what I

had learned from Chapman:
this very basic idea that the

corona extends out through
the Solar System, filling

everything, and then I realized
that Chapman and Biermann

were mutually exclusive, that
is, the solar corpuscular

radiation that seems to
effect the comet tails cannot

penetrate through a static corona.

You get interactions that block this.

And, on the other hand, I
could not see that either one

of them was wrong.

Parker worked at the apparent contradiction

in the two theories, and found
that they were both right.

I wrote down the equations of
motion and integrated them

and found there was one and
only one solution that fitted

the condition of strongly
bound at the Sun and zero

pressure in infinity, and that
was the solution providing

the supersonic solar wind.

Immediately declared that
it was false and published

papers purportedly showing
alternatives, and gave lectures

decrying the idea, and a lot of
my friends were sympathetic,

they said, "Oh, well, it was
a great idea, but you know,

"great ideas often fall
flat on their face."

And my reaction, of course,
was, "Well, we'll see what

"falls flat on its face."

Parker had to wait five
years for his theory

to be vindicated.

In 1962, the Mariner II probe
to Venus provided the evidence

showing that Parker just had to be right.

The world's first interplanetary
probe signaled back

that space is awash with the
solar wind, exceeding even

Eugene Parker's estimates.

The JPL plasma detector simply
showed there was a wind

of anywhere from 300 to 800
kilometers per second,

and the wind was always
there and it never ceased,

and that was it.

I refused to argue with anybody after that.

Modern space telescopes revealed

the complexity of Parker's solar wind.

From the Sun's equator, a
constant stream of particles

evaporates into space.

Occasionally, violent gusts
break free of the Sun's

gravitational and magnetic forces.

These are the flares and
coronal mass ejections

first witnessed by SkyLab.

These electrically charged
hurricanes are ferocious

and brutal, and the planets
lie in their firing line.

Mercury, the closest planet
to the Sun, bears the full

brunt of the solar wind.

Any atmosphere this moonlight
world may once have had

has long been blown away,
leaving its surface bathed

in deadly radiation.

Mars is larger than Mercury,
and four times further from

the Sun, and yet, even here,
it is thought that the solar

wind has stripped away up to a third

of its original atmosphere.

Venus, our nearest neighbor,
has an atmosphere many times

thicker than the Earth, but
probes have discovered its

clouds are also being eroded by solar wind,

creating a comet-like tail that
stretches back to the orbit

of the Earth.

But what of our own atmosphere?

The Earth's magnetic field
stretches far into space,

and fights a constant battle
with the Sun to deflect

the solar wind and protect
our atmosphere from erosion.

As the solar wind and the
Earth's magnetic field is

steadily battling against
it's other magnet field,

is being compressed by the solar
wind, and as this pressure

increases and sends the particles
along the magnetic fields,

and down to the polar areas
of the Earth, and we see the

most light as Aurora in
the upper atmosphere.

It's clear that we live in
a region dominated by the

solar wind, which extends far
out into space, far beyond

the outer planets.

The next question is how far
out into space does the solar

wind extend, as is spreads
out, going farther and farther

from the Sun?

To try and measure the
solar wind, scientists

relied on space probes.

From as far away as Jupiter,
these recorded massive

radio emissions.

The noise was being generated
by a battle between Jupiter's

magnetic field and the solar wind.

As the spacecraft Voyager
visited all the outer planets,

it picked up the same telltale
signature of solar wind

buffeting magnetic fields.

When it left Neptune, it
was still accompanied

by the solar wind.

Three years beyond Pluto, it
detected a mysterious burst

of radio energy.

The signals were picked up
at the tracking station at

Goldstone, California, where
Don Gurnett had been keeping

in touch with Voyager.

Well, my primary interest
these days is to follow the

solar wind as it expands out from the Sun.

We know that it has to be
stopped someplace by the

interstellar gas, and this
boundary we call the heliopause.

The radio burst picked up by Voyager

was completely unexpected.

There were no giant planets
within three billion kilometers.

We did not, at first, really
know for sure the origin

of this thing, and we thought
it might be coming from

a planet such as Jupiter or Saturn.

It also occurred to us
that it may be coming from

much farther away from the Sun.

In the end, their search
led them back to the

heart of the Solar System.

We noticed that there was a
series of extremely powerful

coronal mass ejections some 400
days before the radio burst.

Checking through Voyager's log,

Gurnett found that it had been
overtaken by the outburst

after 100 days.

Ten months later, the solar
gust reached some kind

of magnetic boundary.

Was this the heliopause, the
outer limit of the solar wind?

So our basic model is that
this coronal mass ejection

produced a pulse of plasma
that came out from the Sun

and propagated for 400 days;
we detected it going by

Voyager I and Voyager II.

And that pulse of plasma
eventually reached the heliopause

and caused the radio emission.

The radio burst places the heliopause

at four times the distance of Pluto.

This is how far the power
of our Sun extends.

Even the most distant planets,
where the Sun appears

as little more than a bright star,

bathe in its evaporating atmosphere.

The planets are bound by
the gravity of our Sun.

They were formed as a
byproduct of its creation.

On at least one of them,
the Sun sustains life.

But our Sun, along with the
billions of other stars,

has a more fundamental significance

for the planets.

And this lies at its very core.

The Sun's core is the
ultimate nuclear reactor.

Douglas Gough wants to see it in action.

My ultimate goal is mainly
to learn about the structure

of the core, because the nuclear
physics is so interesting.

The nuclear reactions that
change material that produce

new particles that leave the
Sun, understanding that

helps us to understand the basic physics

of elementary matter.

1995 saw the launch of a new era of solar

exploration: the start of the
journey that may yet take us

to the heart of the stars.

The solar observatory SOHO
can view the Sun in x-rays,

ultraviolet, and visible light.

But SOHO carries an additional feature:

in 1975, when Douglas Gough
learned that the Sun's surface

rippled like a pond, he instantly saw a way

to see into its core.

What I realized is that
this is a way of seeing

inside the Sun.

You can't see inside the Sun with light,

because it's opaque.

But this was really sound.

You could hear inside the Sun.

And by hearing inside the
Sun, you could learn what the

structure of the Sun is inside,
and this was an amazing

concept for me, that you could
actually get inside a star.

The surface of the Sun was heaving.

Every six minutes, the entire
star breathes in and out.

Its gaseous ocean swells and
dips, and a complex pattern

of ripples shimmers across
its surface, providing clues

to the hidden world beneath.

The Sun is like a chorus
of people, of instruments,

playing, but not in tune.

They're all very different.

It's cacophonous, which gives
us lots of information about

the detailed interior.

The sound waves move back
and forth inside the Sun,

and give tones, just like the
tones of a musical instrument.

Already, SOHO has revealed
new surface phenomena.

In the aftermath of a solar
flare, seismic quakes spread

out for thousands of kilometers.

We've learned a great deal
about the outside of the Sun

from studying the seismic waves from SOHO.

We've learned about the dynamics.

We've learned about the
chemical composition.

Now we want to do something
similar in the very core.

SOHO has stripped away the
outer layers of the Sun.

Beneath the surface, it has
discovered rivers of plasma,

superheated gases that circle its pole.

Looking like a jet stream on Earth,

it seems the Sun has weather, too.

But deep in the core is a
remarkable chemical factory.

The stars generate stuff.

They make all the matter
that you and I are made of,

from hydrogen and helium, but
they make this heavy stuff

that we are made of.

They're the factories that make material.

So to understand the Universe,
we need to study the stars.

Every star has a core, almost
all stars are generating

nuclear energy, transmuting
elements from one to another,

building up the heavy elements,
the whole building blocks

of the Universe.

We believe the physics in those
stars is the same as the

physics on Earth.

This physics we need to
understand more carefully,

so that under extreme
conditions we can work out what

that physics implies.

On a very large scale,
what it implies about

the structure of the Universe,

and how the whole Universe evolves.

In the beginning, the Universe contained

just hydrogen and helium.

For 12 billion years, stars
have been transforming these

simple gases into more complex elements.

Our Sun was born from that process.

Four and a half billion years
ago, a massive star on the

fringes of our galaxy ended
its existence as a supernova.

Its death throes sent the
contents of its core spraying

outwards into space.

These superheated grains of
silicon, iron, and many other

elements careered into a
neighboring cloud of gas,

causing it to collapse.

As the mixture of gas and dust
gravitated towards the center

of the cloud, they ignited a
nuclear reaction, and our Sun

burst into life.

Around it, the remaining debris
from the supernova combined

to form the planets.

We are made of stardust,
forged in the heart of a star.

In the last 400 years, science
has peeled back the blinding

layers of our Sun to reveal a
star, one of the countless

engines of creation which made the planets,

and which made us.

Our ancestors saw a perfect
disc of light; a god.

But modern science has revealed
an entity for more complex

and powerful than those
ancient humans could ever

have believed possible.