Our Mr Sun, Part 2

[Music] we know the answer not only to your energy but to what makes other stars in the universe shine Thermon nuclear reaction it's the key word that wound up the universe thermonuclear 8 to five they've made a hydrogen bomb we certainly have Mr son and the News rocked the world but with you it's old stuff the equivalent of 4 billion hydrogen bombs have been going off inside you every second for some 4 billion years give or take a billion what smart guy figured that out Dr Hans beta of Cornell is the gentleman in 1938 he announced that the source of the sun's energy is the fusion of 564 million tons of hydrogen into 560 million tons of helium each second 564 to 560 of where did the missing 4 million tons go just disappear disappears as mass as as matter but reappears as light heat and all sorts of radiation quite a trick stroll Saul making 4 million tons disappear 4 million tons that he is roll 12 I brought along a trickster friend of mine Thermo the magician who has an act which he claims explains the sun's magic I am thermal I will do for you such a trick only me and the Stars can do pay attention this is one way to make a hydrogen bomb Nature's Way so hydrogen one two three 4 what is hydrogen the smallest Atom from which you build all the other atoms so we will weigh the hydrogen scale each bottle weighs exactly 100 o four bottles 400 Oz remember that 400 oz so now carbon this is carbon a piece of coal to you that is what I start with hydrogen and carbon so now I will heat them 30 million de I will heat them how in a hydrogen bomb it is done by exploding an ordinary atom bomb to ignite the hydrogen bomb but the Stars they do it by pressure gravity like our Mr son so now I play Mr sunand and heat the hydrogen and the carbon to 30 million de fire fire fire fire fire now I am ready number one hydrogen come I thmo now give the command Fusion so what have we here nitrogen the gas what makes 4 fifs of the air you breathe air now number two and number three hydrogen come Fusion now we have oxygen the other fifth of the air you breathe Number Four f ah now we have coal again same piece and we have helium what you feel balloon with for hydrogens if they are 30 million de hot 30 million de it is not children playing with matches the four hydrogens come out one helium the carbon comes back the same you see same weight no change that's why we call this the carbon cycle now we weigh the helium should weigh 400 Oz like the hydrogen no yes naturally but it can be the helium weighs 3 oz less than the hydrogen where did the 3 oz go that is the magic of the stars that is the secret of the hydrogen bomb come I show you come back 3 oz here is where they went they changed [Music] into now the energy in those three little ounces that completely disappeared as matter that energy is enough to raise the Empire State Building 2500 Miles High now the carbon cycle which is what Thermo just explained to us is not the only way in which you can change hydrogen into helium plus energy you may also use a very special and rare process in which you put two hydrogen atoms together directly is that the famous proton proton process say you've been reading oh Mr Sun you do not annihilate or destroy just two or 3 o but 4 million tons of hydrogen matter each second that gives you your unbelievable energy which you radiate out into space we think that originally you were a great loose cloud of gas mostly hydrogen being contracted by gravity as you were compressed the temperature went up just as the air in a bicycle tire gets hotter and hotter as you pump it finally the temperature in your core reached the necessary 30 million de needed to trigger the thermonuclear reaction Presto the furnace was lit never to go out again as long as you live Mr son the hydrogen began burning into helium and energy gravity tries to compress you burning hydrogen tries to expand you the two forces just balance each other what it's Perfection itself a furnace made of its own fuel an immense continuous hydrogen bomb operating at an even heat for billions of years what a wonderful invention you are Mr son uh which brings up a point uh how long before he runs out of this here now Hy fuel oh he still has about 98% of his fuel left but 00 billion years from now Mr Sun you'll perhaps run out of fuel you'll expire go wherever good stars go we'll go with you because as you go we go you see you're not just a Big Blob of hot Mass to us you're the head of our family we want to know more about you we depend on you for our very existence yes in fact we're depending on you heavily for the solution of two of man's biggest problems well At Last I'm being appreciated what did you say your name was Dr research you big what are those two big problems you spoke of Dr research the first is the age-old problem of food roll five and boy the number of mils that need food keeps increasing in 1650 after 25,000 years of man our population had reached half a billion by 1950 only 300 years years later the population climbed a 2 and 1/2 billion five times as many out of all the human beings who ever lived one out of 20 is alive today one out of 20 alive today isn't that amazing we never had food enough for all in the past we don't have enough for all today two out of every three persons on Earth actually eat below the minimum necessary for health yet 100 million new babies are born every year a yearly baby crop nearly equal to the population of all of South America and all born hungry yes our population's practically [Music] exploding I'll bet he doesn't know who grows his food for him oh yeah we know quite a bit about that that is he does rooll four our food is grown by a natural process called photosynthesis which means putting together with light your light the oldest biggest and most important manufacturing operation in the world 99% of all our food and fuel is created by photosynthesis a process that goes on only in Plants never in animals on every Green Leaf there are millions of submicroscopic little onean factories turning out more sugar than all the ships and railroads in the world could carry in the head man of each Factory is a little green molecule called chlorophyll the only engineer with a knowhow about this still secret life process chlorophyll is so small and so secretive that not even the most powerful microscopes can spy on [Music] him here's the way we think he works the veins of the leaf bring him water from the roots from the air he grabs a molecule of carbon dioxide CO2 he puts a water molecule and a carbon dioxide molecule together then he reaches for a piece of sunlight and this is what we don't quite know how he adds this sunlight and I'm not going to tell you either you can Dar well find out for yourself quiet piece by piece he adds more sunlight to his sugar cake then he pulls out an oxygen atom from the mixture and releases it into the air and the Russians didn't invent me either I invented myself then he takes some salts that come up in the veins sprinkles them over the mixture for icing and puts the completed sugar cake into a waiting artery out of this sugar or sunshine cake the tree makes leaves trunk roots and fruit in the sea chlorophyll produces even more food than he does on land the whole surface of the Seas is teeming with billions of tons of a minute single cell vegetable called phytoplankton these in turn are eaten by countless almost invisible little animals called Zoop Plankton which are eaten by little fish which are eaten by bigger fish which are eaten by still bigger [Music] fish yes all fish are ultimately made of chlorophyll sunshine cake and when we catch them and can them we're catching and canning [Music] sunlight in fact all animals feed on sunshine cake in one form or another the energy that Junior gets from milk was in a contented cow 24 hours ago 24 hours before that the same energy was in Clover which had absorbed it from sunlight that had come 93 million miles in 8 minutes from the surface of the Sun but it taken 20 million years to find its way to to the surface from the Sun Central furnace so you see the energy that makes Junior run that makes a porpus leap it makes me talk so much that energy is hydrogen that burned in your central furnace long long before man walked the Earth you know brother research I'm beginning to like you do all the people know these things about me no that's why this program what's the big hitch and a food problem for one thing chlorophyll is too slow take any acre of forest or vegetables the amount of sunshine converted to plant food averages only 2 tons of vegetable matter per year but if all the lights you send us could be used by chlorop we could raise 2,000 tons of food per acre per year little chlorophyll may know the big secret but he's awfully [Music] inefficient who in efficient I just make sugar can I happen if those silly trees build Trunks and branches and Roots out of it that you can't eat what you're looking for is a plant that's all fruit well there is such a plant all edible too and it multiplies faster than rabbits but you scientists are too dumb to find [Applause] it there you are Mr Man find the plant oh we found it already Mr Sun roll 10 found it in fresh waterer Lakes a kind of green algae called Chlorella a tiny one cell plant that has learned the mathematical trick of multiplying by dividing each cell gives birth to from four to 16 daughter cells which all grow up and repeat the process chlorella contains fats carbohydrates and up to 50% proteins and is all edible all fruit as Mr chlorop would say all over the world scientists are doing research on chlorella in Japan Dr Hiroshi tamama of the Tokugawa Institute has done some of the most interesting and practical work for there food is definitely a problem into these troughs water containing chlorella cultures is pumped nutrient salts are added the troughs are covered with plastic sheeting to let in sunlight while extra carbon dioxide is bubbled into the solution when the culture becomes intensely green the chlorella crop is harvested after washing and drying the fine powder looks like green flour Mrs tamama wife of the director has added this to regular flour and made excellent biscuits and cakes out of it if these processes ever become practical underfed populations may have a new rich source of food yes indeed an acre of chorella can convert sunlight into some 20 tons of plant matter against one or two tons of an ordinary crop but there's a second great problem facing us eventually [Applause] for thousands of years we got our fuel from burning wood sun power Mr Sun stored up in trees next we put animals to work sun power from grass then came educated power to do work animals couldn't be taught to do human slave power to build roads pyramids and row ships sun power with brains but slaves had to be fed so we discovered power that didn't eat like windmills s and water wheels the Machine age was [Applause] born but modern machines need to be fed too fed with fuels where do we get the fuels from the big Fuel Man himself over the ages Mr Sun was kind enough to store them up for it chop for living Sunshine dig for fossil sunshine drill for liquid [Music] [Applause] Sunshine dams for silent Sunshine fuel fuel more fuel but how much fuel's in the bank how big is the trust fund the old boy left us roll 13 well suppose all our energy had been deposited in the sun power bank Incorporated founded millions of years ago with assets Unlimited in 1850 each American for instance withdrew enough fuel from the fuel bank to generate 400 horsepower hours for himself but nobody worried too much about it our assets still appeared Unlimited in 1950 each American withdrew 10,000 horsepower hours from sun power Incorporated while Atomic scientists were making some minor deposits this began to worry us our assets were becoming definitely limited by 1975 we'll probably withdraw 20,000 horsepower hours each atomic energy fuel deposits will save off the run for some time but there's only so much uranium and Thorium in the world that will go too when the principal's gone you're going to have to live on your income huh but our income is only about 10% of our power spending when need help every day I send you a thousand times more power than you use in a year it's up to you fellas anybody working on getting power direct from old blo hard here oh yes but not nearly enough roll 6B some years ago Dr Charles greedy Abbott an enthusiastic Pioneer in solar engines designed this vacuum jacketed boiler tube at the focus of a parabolic mirror which will convert sunlight to engine power today the French laboratory of solar energy has an enormous solar furnace at mon Louie for metal research at high temperatures in India Dr sbat nager the famous Indian scientist experimented with solar cookers for home use on one of these cookers an Indian family can cook its Noonday meal with no heat other than the sun's [Music] heat some other ways depend on glass sunlight coming through a window heats up everything in the room but heat radiated back from furniture and floor is long heat waves which the window glass stops from going back out thust trapping the sun's heat is that why green houses covered with glass are warmer inside than the air outside right that's why your closed car gets so unbearably hot standing out in the sun Dr Maria telas has designed a model house in Massachusetts in which solar heat is ingeniously collected stored and distributed through out the whole house now these are more or less well-known mechanical ways of using sun power directly but there's exciting research going on with some brand new ways you think Mr chlorophyll was pretty smart with his tricky sunshine cake that makes food out of your sunlight well the science boys have come up with a sunshine kick that makes electricity out of your sunlight oh yes you mean the solar battery yeah that's hardly even a cookie at let alone a Cate doc that's big news well the the solar battery now held in the sun this thin little cell a sunshine wafer we might call it produces a usable amount of electric current out of the sunlight that falls on it it was cooked up out of basic research at the Bell Telephone lab by three scientists Daryl chapen calvan Fuller and Gerald Pearson you know although this is quite expensive at the moment the Simplicity of this Sunshine wafer is startling qu bake one for Old Glory push doc I I'd be delighted look get him old pastry cook research the recipe for this solar wafer sounds just like a vacation just sand and sunshine thank you son plain old sand is composed of silicon and oxygen its Sunday go to meeting name is silicon dioxide separate out the oxygen and the bits of seaweed Bottle Pops and other odds and ends and we have left a metal silicon ah but our silicon must be pure silicon so we purify it and purify it until it's as pure as the driven snow now melt the silicon and add just a pinch of arsenic for flavor mix thoroughly and cool until it crystallizes then from the Arsenic flavored silicon roll slice off a razor thin wafer put the wafer back into the oven fill oven with a boron gas and bake to white heat the Boron Cooks into the surface forms an extremely thin icing over the wafer remove finished wafer connect one wire from electric motor to Boron icing and the other wire to the wafer itself expose wafer to sunlight press though the motor starts running with the efficiency of an automobile and nothing is used up but the sunshine which is free is that something well I'll be darn so you see in a solar battery it's energy from the Sun that moves the electricity which in turn rotates Motors or as in this case Powers Rural Telephone Lines by charging storage batteries but the solar batter isn't all there's other important research in changing sunlight into Power Dr EI rabinowitch has put together a chemical cell that'll change light waves into electric current but storing sun power for night use is a big part of this energy from Sun problem well Dr Lawrence J height of MIT is experimenting with the process in which sunlight decomposes water back into oxygen and hydrogen the hydrogen being a storable fuel another possibility phosphor are chemical powders that absorb sunlight and can give it back slowly in the dark I read where Westinghouse Engineers predict a wallpaper containing phosphor which will absorb daylight during the day then glow for hours after dark a city painted with phosphor paint of the future might glow all night these are some of the processes that are being researched on a small scale today Mr Sun but our Engineers can't turn the wheels of Industry on little Wafers they'll have to build efficient generators that spread out over Acres even square miles to compete with a cheap coal and oil still available to us but doctor what about Atomic power oh great hopes for it of course especially now since Atomic plants can make their own fuel with so-called breeder reactors some even dream of imitating the Stars getting power from hydrogen Fusion but if dreams fail the answer must be sun power from our Mr Sun what if you don't find ways to use my free Sunshine for fuel then the Machine age is over we'll have to go back to muscle power and the half billion population that muscle power alone can support but that will never happen oh no why not because man's greatest power source is his mind God gave him that not you without taking a step he can travel faster and farther than any animal without even getting wet he can outswim any fish without a feather on him he can fly fast faster higher and farther than any [Music] Eagle he can send his eyes and ears hundreds of miles into space where he's never even been and his pride open the secret of the atom but he's never even seen when his fuels run low man's mind and Imagination Meet The Challenge and invent undreamed of ways to use the free sunlight God showers down upon it just remember somebody must love you very much that planet you live on is not like all the rest you're blessed with just the right size the right temperature the right atmosphere the right composition every just right to produce the biggest Miracle of all life so go ahead ask inquire seek the truth it's right that you should know or the good Lord wouldn't have given you that driving curiosity measure the outside with mathematics but measure the inside with prayer prayer is res search too study man as well as the world so keep on pitching The Best Is Yet To Come for you I predict man's next great adventure will be the sun age when that happens you'll be rich beyond all dreams I predict great Sun cities built on desert wastelands where everything is run by sunlight I predict oh sure that's fine but suppose I begin cutting up then what you won't but if you did man has migrated many times before and he'll do it again if he has to if you make it too hot for him on Earth man is capable of conceiving a way to move the whole kitten Kaboodle to Green a pastures on some other planet oh no we like it here don't change on us Mr son we used to worship you as an unknown God but now that we know you better we love you as our great and good friend so keep on Shining Mr [Music] Sun thanks for all the radiant riches you shower down upon us thanks for our eyes and all the glories we behold thanks for all the Green Forest s the great deposit of black diamonds the deep pools of liquid gold you put in the bank for us thanks for the wheat fields and all the fruits and flowers you grow for us thanks for feeding our animals our Birds our insects and all the fish in the sea and thanks especially for the glory and beauty of your good mornings and your good evenings in the words of St Francis be praised my Lord in what you have created above all else be praised in our brother Master son good night Brotherhood now you're cooking with sunshine [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] the Bell Telephone system takes pride in bringing you this program in its series of shows on science we wish to express our gratitude to the distinguished Board of advisers who guide the choice and treatment of scientific matter for the series for the program you have just scene our thanks to the special advisers who have suggested and checked the scientific material the Bell Telephone system is indebted to all these men and to many institutions for the generous support they have given this Venture in public education through [Music] [Applause] [Music] entertainment for