Nuclear Fusion

Have you ever looked up at the Sun and felt its warm hug on your skin? Or have you ever counted the twinkling stars in the dark night sky? That amazing, brilliant light is me. I am the secret sparkle inside every single star. I am like a super-powerful, super-tiny hug between the smallest things in the universe, called atoms. When they squeeze together, a little bit of their energy bursts out as light and heat. That’s how the Sun has been shining for billions of years. You can call me Nuclear Fusion.

For a long, long time, people looked up at the Sun and wondered, 'How does it keep shining so brightly?'. They knew it wasn't a giant campfire, so its power was a huge mystery. Then, about a hundred years ago, in the 1920s, a very smart astronomer named Arthur Eddington had a brilliant idea. He guessed that stars were powered by me. He imagined that deep inside the Sun, tiny hydrogen atoms were squeezing together so tightly that they turned into a new kind of atom called helium. He thought this big squeeze was what released all that amazing energy. A few years later, on March 7th, 1939, another brilliant scientist named Hans Bethe figured out the exact recipe for how I work inside stars. It was like he had discovered the secret instructions for how to bake a star. He showed everyone the special steps that turned tiny atoms into sunshine.

After understanding my secret, scientists had an even bigger idea: 'If Nuclear Fusion can power the Sun, maybe we can build a tiny star on Earth to create clean energy for everyone.'. It’s a very tricky thing to do because to get me to work, you need things to be hotter than the center of the Sun. But people haven't given up. Today, scientists from all over the world are working together on giant projects to learn how to control my power. They are building special machines to hold a tiny, glowing star and use its warmth to power our world. Imagine having electricity that doesn’t make the air dirty and comes from the same magic that makes the stars shine. That’s my promise for the future. I am the power of the stars, and I hope one day to light up your homes in a clean and beautiful way.