BACKGROUND

The story of our Sun begins roughly 4.5 billion years ago when it was born from clouds of gas and dust. Eventually, enough gas collected together and collapsed under its own mass that fusion inside the star was triggered, leading to the enormous energy output that we see today. The Sun has been burning for billions of years--and will continue to burn for billions more--until it eventually evolves onto the next stage of its life. It will then become a giant, growing in size and consuming the Earth, before dying in a spectacular explosion. In five different posts, we will explore stellar evolution in more detail--where did our Sun come from, and where will happen to it in the future?

We are interested in selecting the lifecycle of the Sun as a topic to explain for multiple reasons. For one, the Sun is something that we all live with and something that many cultures have worshipped. That is to say, the Sun is something that anybody can relate to, and the question of what exactly it is and where it came from is a natural one that we thought would be an interesting one to answer. Furthermore, stellar evolution is a deep and active field of research, so having that depth available allows us to go more into the details of astrophysical processes to better target a different audience. This is especially relevant for our group since some of us study astrophysics in university, and this topic would allow us to share our expertise with others and to practice delivering material to both a layman audience as well as audiences with more physics knowledge.