Humanity’s nuclear arsenal is capable of destroying all life on Earth. Over. And over. And over. Maybe it’s time we dumped it far away. We might want to inhabit other planets in the future, so how about our closest star? How many nukes could we throw at the Sun? What would be the price tag for this mission? And could we accidentally destroy our only source of daylight?
Transcript and sources:
00:00 Sending our nukes into the Sun
00:52 Fusion energy of the Sun
02:07 Thanks Better Internet!
03:11 Countries that possess nukes
05:07 How much would it cost?
06:49 Firing all the hydrogen bombs
08:09 The antimatter bomb
Questions or concerns? Contact us at
Get our 100 best episodes in one mind-blowing book:
Join this channel to get access to perks:
Check out our other channels:
How to Survive:
Aperture:
Crazy Creatures:
Your Body On:
Origins of Food:
Versus:
WTF Did I Just Watch:
Watch more what-if scenarios:
Planet Earth:
The Cosmos:
Technology:
Your Body:
Humanity:
T-shirts and merch:
Suggest an episode:
Newsletter:
What If elsewhere:
Instagram:
Discord:
Twitter:
Facebook:
What If in Spanish:
What If in Mandarin:
Podcast:
What If is a mini-documentary web series that takes you on an epic journey through hypothetical worlds and possibilities. Join us on an imaginary adventure through time, space and chance while we (hopefully) boil down complex subjects in a fun and entertaining way.
Produced with love by Underknown in Toronto:
Contact us at
From what the planets are like, to whether they could be places to find life, join me as we explore how Teegarden B Has Highest Possibility Of Alien Life!
Subscribe for more videos:
Watch Our Playlist: Exoplanets, Potentially Super Earths, New Earths!
Very recently (like found in 2019 recently), observers from CARMENES (who are a team looking for Class-M planets for us to habitate) found two Earth-like planets just 12.5 lightyears from planet Earth.Granted, that’s still pretty far and it’d still take us a long time to travel there, but 12 lightyears is much closer than the 45,000 light years and beyond of certain other “Earth-like planets” that have ben found. Not to mention, these two planets feel like ones that could have both the necessary water and land for us to live on:
“The two planets resemble the inner planets of our solar system,” lead author Mathias Zechmeister, a research scientist at the Institute for Astrophysics at the University of Göttingen in Germany, said in a statement. “They are only slightly heavier than Earth and are located in the so-called habitable zone, where water can be present in liquid form.”
Research has obviously just begun on these two stars, but there is hope that they could be the real deal. For example, usually the fact that this is a red dwarf star (called Teegarden) would be a red-flag, as they don’t produce as much heat and light. But, the two planets are actually closer to the sun, so that actually would work in our favor.
The only truly “weird” thing about these planets is the orbits around their sun. It takes them between 1-2 weeks to do it, even less than that in fact. That’s massively quick. But, if you think about it, time is only a construct, so what would really matter is how those quick orbits help or hinder the landscape.
Even if these two twins aren’t perfectly suitable, the team at CARMENES are hopeful that other Earth-like planets could be as close as they are, and possibly in the same system as them.
But for now, let’s focus on Teegarden B, and talk about why certain people think that this is the planet that has the highest probability of being a place where alien life can be found.
Obviously, the biggest hurdle has been cleared in that the planet in is in the habitable zone of its star Teegarden. You’d be surprised by how many “potential Earths” are out there, but few of them are in a good range from their sun, which makes them either too hot or too cold, and when you’re trying to pick a planet to live on…you don’t go to a planet of extremes unless you’re in an EXTREME emergency, am I right?
Anyway, on the planet Teegarden B, you’ll find that the temperature is a suitable 82.4 degrees Fahrenheit on average. Which means it’s a semi-hot planet, but trust me when I say you’d rather have a “Summer Day” on another planet than a freezing one or one that is so hot your skin will melt.
Furthermore, as outlined earlier, there is a VERY good chance that Teegarden B has water. But not just water, oceans! A LOT of scientists feel that the oceans of Teegarden B are not unlike what we have here on Earth, and if that’s true that could be an even bigger sign that there is life on the planet. Not to mention, if there is land masses on there and not just a water world (which hasn’t been confirmed as of yet but is likely) that would mean that it could be a near copy of Earth with just different proportions of water and land.
But all of this would be moot if the star known as Teegarden wasn’t one to “cooperate” with the planet. What do I mean by that? Think about our own sun. Because of the distance to our star (93 million miles in total) we don’t get the brunt of the heat or the light or the radiation that it produces. We get just enough of it, and our atmosphere and magnetosphere deflects or absorbs all the other things that could potentially hurt us if we were to get it full blast.
There are many stars in the universe, and many of them have Earth-like planets surrounding them, including ones we truly believe could be the future home of humanity. The problem is that most times the stars do things like solar flares, massive bursts of energy and radiation that can destroy an atmosphere and cause untold damage to the surface of the planet that we’re trying to inhabit.
But in the case of Teegarden…despite it being a Red Dwarf star…it doesn’t act up at all. In fact, it’s been known to be a rather inactive and quiet star. Which is great, because given the distance of Teegarden to Teegarden B (which is much closer than the distance from the Earth to the sun), if flares were to happen, the planet would be ravaged by it. But since that’s not the case, it appears as though, Teegarden B really does have the best case scenario to produce life.
What is our place in the Milky Way? And our place in the Universe? In ancient times, many people had the idea our planet Earth to be at the centre of the Universe, as stated by Aristotle and Ptolomeus in their ptolemaic – aristotelic concept of universe: according to this model, Earth is at the center of the universe and all the other celestial bodies orbit around it. Today lots of people think the same. But is this really the case? To answer this question, let’s try to to a travel in the universe, through space and time; we will start our travel from our planet to reach, in the end, the extreme boundaries of the universe.
——————————————————————————————-
Subscribe for more videos:
Business Enquiries: Lorenzovareseaziendale@gmail.com
——————————————————————————————-
During the 1600s, Galileo Galilei, the famous Italian astronomer, was one of the first people, during modern age, to have some doubts about the geocentric model of universe: thanks to telescopic observations, he was able to demonstrate our Earth is not at the rotation centre of planets and the Sun, but really it is the Sun itself. Moreover, observing planet Jupiter, he discovered that the giant planet is the rotation center for its moons. So, Galileo became aware that the center of the Solar System was the Sun, not the Earth!
The Solar System is made by a star, the Sun, eight planets and different types of minor celestial bodies, like comets, asteroids and dwarf planets.
Well, the Earth isn’t at the center of the Solar System, maybe is the closest planet to our Sun? No it isn’t, because it is only the third planet from the Sun: the closest planet to our star is Mercury, followed by Venus and then Earth. The Earth moves around the Sun, our star, just like all the other celestial bodies in the Solar System do: this implies that the Sun, and not our planet, is the center of rotation of the Solar System! The Earth takes a year, 365 days, to travel its orbit, and its average distance from the Sun is 150 million kilometers, which is the measure unit of distances in the Solar System known as the astronomical unit and abbreviated AU. Why do we talk about average distance? Because the orbit traveled by the Earth around the Sun is not circular but elliptical, and this means that there will be an aphelion (i.e. the point of the Earth’s orbit farthest from the Sun, just over 1 AU away from it) and a perihelion (the point of Earth’s orbit closest to the Sun, just under 1 AU). An alternative way to define the astronomical unit passes through the light time, in particular we can say that the average distance Earth – Sun is equal to about 8 light minutes: this means that sunlight takes 8 minutes to arrive on Earth, so that the sunlight we see at a certain moment is not that of that moment but it is the sunlight which left from the Sun 8 minutes earlier! In other words: if the sun went out for example at 2.30 pm, we would only notice it at 2.38 pm! Or again: if you could travel aboard the Star Wars Millennium Falcon it would take you only 8 minutes to travel from the Sun to the Earth (when in reality it takes a few years). To give a more concrete idea of the dimensions of the Solar System: if the Sun were a sphere with a diameter of 14 cm, Pluto would be at 700 m from the Sun, like seven regular soccer fields!
The nearest celestial body to Earth is the Moon, our satellite: to reach it you should take three days off! It’s the same time taken by Apollo astronauts to cover the distance of nearly 400 thousand kilometers that separate Moon and Earth. But if you had Star Trek Enterprise, and travel at maximum curvature, you would only take less than 2 seconds to reach the Moon!
——————————————————————————————-
“If You happen to see any content that is yours, and we didn’t give credit in the right manner please let us know at Lorenzovareseaziendale@gmail.com and we will correct it immediately”
“Some of our visual content is under an Attribution-ShareAlike license. ( in its different versions such as 1.0, 2.0, 3,0, and 4.0 – permitting commercial sharing with attribution given in each picture accordingly in the video.”
Credits: Mark A. Garlick / markgarlick.com
Credits: Ron Miller
Credits: Nasa/Shutterstock/Storyblocks/Elon Musk/SpaceX/ESA
Credits: Flickr
Credits: ESO
What would happen if the moon disappeared?
Our moon had a great status from the beginning of human civilization, it was immortalized by
various religions all around the world. In greek mythology there was a moon goddess named
Selene the daughter of the Titans Hyperion and Theia, it was worshiped and respected the
same way as the sun god Helios which indicates that our ancestors placed the moon and the
sun on equal footing. Moon is also worshiped in Hindu mythology by those who have
fluctuations in their life, ups and downs and by those who wish to have sons.
——————————————————————————————-
Subscribe for more videos:
Business Enquiries: lorenzovareseaziendale@gmail.com
——————————————————————————————-
The moon is featured in Van Gogh’s masterpiece “The starry night” , Frank Sinatra’s delightful song “Fly me
to the moon” and many other captivating art works. Art and history have always been enchanted
by the moon but today we intend to highlight the important role of the moon in elevating our
civilization from a scientific perspective. Our aim is to answer the question “ what would happen
if the moon disappeared? “
Before answering that question here are some facts about the moon:
1- The moon is the nearest and brightest celestial object orbiting the Earth in an elliptical path. It
may not follow the same path every cycle due to the fact that its orbit orientation is not entirely
fixed in space but rotates over time resulting in precession and inclination. Its apparent size
differs from the actual size due to the relative motion to an observer on the earth, you can
understand this as follows, the nearer an object to you the bigger you will see it.
2- The moon was formed 4.51 billion years ago approximately after 60 million years of the entire
formation of the solar system. There are several models regarding the moon formation but the
prevailing model is that the Earth-Moon system was formed due to an extremely huge impact
between a Mars sized celestial body called Theia and the proto-Earth, which is the earth at its
very early stages. The impact resulted in the Earth with its shape today and some other material
in its orbit which accreted and formed the moon.
3- Like the earth, the moon is a differentiated celestial body that can be divided into crust,
mantle and core. The Core is solid with a molten iron boundary around it, the mantle is the
largest layer formed by a complex yet extremely important process called the magma fractional
crystallization. The geo-chemical mapping of the moon rocks collected by the Apollo mission
suggests that the crust is mainly composed of mafic minerals which are rich in magnesium and
iron.
4- The photodecomposition process prevents the formation of water on the lunar surface. In
other words, the photons radiated by the sun decompose the water molecules formed on the
lunar surface.
After knowing some interesting facts about the moon and how it was formed, It’s time to
consider the main question of today’s episode.
1- You may wonder what is exactly the relation between the moonlight absence and the
disturbance of the ecosystem because at the first glance they may seem completely unrelated,
however they are strongly connected. The ecosystem is by definition a biological community of
interacting organisms and their physical environment, it contains biotic and abiotic parts; the
biotic parts include all the living organisms whereas the abiotic components include the
environmental factors such as rocks, temperature and humidity. According to the encyclopedia
of national geographic, every factor in the ecosystem depends on every other factor either
directly or indirectly and the slight disturbance in one factor will end up affecting the whole
ecosystem; for example the change in temperature of an ecosystem will limit the type of plants
that grow in there and hence will affect the animals that depend on these plants as a primary
source of food and shelter leading them to adapt to that change or move to another ecosystem
or perish. Another important and related concept to highlight is the food chain; which describes
how energy and nutrients move through an ecosystem. In the food chain, energy is transferred
from one living organism through another in the form of food. There are primary producers such
as plants, primary consumers such as animals that depend on plants as their food source and
secondary consumers such as predators and decomposing organisms.
From the kind of star it is, to its impact on our world, and more! Join me as we explore the Sun: Facts and History.
——————————————————————————————-
Subscribe for more videos:
Business Enquiries: lorenzovareseaziendale@gmail.com
——————————————————————————————-
8. Our Star
Without a doubt, if you were to list the “most important things in the solar system we live in”, the Earth may be No.1, but the sun is No.2. And for all the reasons that you might expect and know.
Its gravity holds the solar system together, keeping everything from the biggest planets to the smallest particles of debris in its orbit. Electric currents in the Sun generate a magnetic field that is carried out through the solar system by the solar wind—a stream of electrically charged gas blowing outward from the Sun in all directions.
The connection and interactions between the Sun and Earth drive the seasons, ocean currents, weather, climate, radiation belts and aurora.
In short, and in long, the sun is vital to just about everything we do on this planet, and we rely on the sun to do MANY things, even though we’re honestly not controlling anything that it does. Which is a bit of an odd thing for humanity as humans like to control EVERYTHING that has to do with us.
The sun is something we see almost every day (obviously unless cloud cover is blocking it or an eclipse is happening) and even when we don’t see it, we feel its presence. It’s more than just a ball of light in the sky, it’s an energy source, a lifeline in many respects, and as noted above, it helps shape our planet in various ways that would detrimental if it WASN’T doing it.
So if someone was to honestly ask you just how important the sun is, you should tell them all the ways we need the sun, our star, to shine on.
7. Distance From Earth and Its Size
With a radius of 432,168.6 miles (695,508 kilometers), our Sun is not an especially large star—many are several times bigger—but it is still far more massive than our home planet: 332,946 Earths match the mass of the Sun. The Sun’s volume would need 1.3 million Earths to fill it.
Which at first might seem like a bad thing. After all, would we WANT to have a giant ball of fire and radiation just lurking out there that can swallow us whole if it felt like it? Honestly, yes, yes we would, and for a very simple reason, its distance from the Earth.
The Sun is 93 million miles (150 million kilometers) from Earth. Which is a very LONG ways away, and in fact it’s such a distance that they came up with a term for it via “Astronomical Unit”. So when you hear that a planet or star is say 103 AUs away, that means it’s 103 times the distance between the Earth and the sun.
Going back to the distance itself, you might think that this is a “very long way away” from the entity that gives us light and essentially, life. But actually, it’s better that we’re NOT closer to the sun for a whole host of reasons.
Sunlight and its energy dissipates the farther you get away from it. Which is why there is such thing as a “Habitable Zone” in regards to stars where life can exist as well as water and other key things needed for life.
The closer you are to a star, the more impact you’re going to get from its heat and light. The farther you are from a star, the less likely you’re going to get heat and light in the amounts you need. Lest you think we’re exaggerating this, we have the perfect examples for this. It’s called Mercury, Venus and Mars.
Mercury is the closest planet to the sun, and it’s scorching hot as a result. It’s average temperature is 800 degrees Fahrenheit. Plus, because it’s so close to the sun it’s tidally locked, meaning that it has one “side” always facing the sun, and the other side is always away from it.
In regards to Venus, it’s our “twin” but also a case of the suns energy turning it into something else entirely. A buildup of heat and excess carbon dioxide turned it into a “Runaway Greenhouse Planet” which makes it so hot that it can melt lead. And it’s also the hottest planet in the solar system because of the greenhouse effect which was caused by the suns’ radiation.
Heading to Mars, it’s so far away from the Sun that it can’t absorb the sunlight and energy like we do on Earth, so its average temperature is -81 degrees Fahrenheit. Not to mention it doesn’t have a typical atmosphere in any sense so various solar and cosmic rays bombard the planet. And it’s so far away from the sun that even if Earth settled on the planet, using solar panels to get energy for colonies wouldn’t be as viable as you think because the distance is so great.
So as you can see, it’s GOOD that we are 93 million miles away from the sun, it’s the literal perfect spot to be in to get the positive effects of the sun without many of the negatives.
