Each second our sun releases an energy equivalent to 1 trillion megaton bombs which can power our civilization for 5 Lakh Years

Our sun is a nuclear furnace and it is a main-sequence star.  Held together like a ball by gravity, in the centre under extreme pressures and temperatures, sun fuses huge amounts of hydrogen atoms into helium atoms each second. This process is called nuclear fusion which releases huge amounts of energy. At its core, our Sun burns 600 million tons of hydrogen per second producing astonishingly 400 trillion trillion watts of energy. That energy is equivalent to 1 trillion megaton bombs per second which can be enough to power the current needs of our so-called civilzation for another five lack years. Sun has been burning for 4.6 billion years and it has enough hydrogen to burn for another 5 billion years. A stellar fire ball.

To put that into persepective, the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki,Japan in 1945 exploded with an energy of about 20 kilotons of TNT which killed millions of people and destroyed the entire city. But each second sun releases an energy equivalent to 9.192×1010 megatons of TNT per second, or 1,820,000,000 Tsar Bombas – the most powerful thermonuclear bomb ever built!  Sun is a true giant power-house.

So what took  so long for humanity to harness Sun's power, the solar energy to its needs. We, the homo-sapiens started digging out fossil hundreds of years ago like apes . But the world is transitioning now into clean energies with one of the main energy being Solar. In 2018 alone, more than 5 lakh new jobs appeared Solar  industry and it expected to grow by 100% in the next decade itself by 2026. Millions of new jobs are being born as solar technology needs to be applied to other industries such as agriculture, transportation, power etc. Innovations in solar-tech will drive future entrepreneurs. So why wait. Let us build a bright future with the Sun for our kids. Let us make them innnovate and create in solar-workshops.

Sreekanth Panjala

Science Popularizer | Writer