Why And When Will the Sun Stop Burning

In this episode, we step inside the thermonuclear furnace of our closest star to explore the delicate physics keeping it alive and the hidden countdown to its ultimate demise.

Powered by a relentless gravitational weight that crushes its core into a plasma furnace of tens of millions of degrees, the sun survives on a strict balance between inward gravity and the outward push of nuclear fusion.

But calculating the sun's precise lifespan has been plunged into a fascinating scientific mystery.

It turns out that a tiny detail, the exact "recipe" of the sun's heavy chemical ingredients, or its metallicity, acts like a thick winter coat, trapping core radiation and dictating how fast the star burns through its finite hydrogen fuel.

For decades, this recipe was considered a settled cornerstone of astronomy.

Now, two of science's most trusted methods of "reading" the sun are locked in a major contradiction, threatening to alter our standard solar model and force a massive 10 to 15 percent recalculation of the age of the entire cosmos.