Avi Loeb

So about 60% of the mass of the sun will end up condensing into a very cold object that is the size of the Earth.

These objects are called white dwarfs.

We see a lot of them in the graveyard of sun-like stars in the Milky Way galaxy.

Just like if you go to a graveyard, you realize that you will die one day because you see all these monuments for dead people.

And the same is true for the Milky Way galaxy.

We see all these relics of dead suns, that these are white dwarfs.

That's what will happen to the sun.

But until then, it burns its nuclear fuel, and then the sun is...

powered by this nuclear fuel and it has also magnetic fields and the magnetic fields come out of the sun and every now and then two of them cross each other because the sun is rotating there is turbulence so when two magnetic fields cross each other what happens is

a process called reconnection.

They basically cut through each other.

They carry hot gas and they inject a lot of energy into the particles of the gas and you end up with a flare, a solar flare or an eruption.

And depending on how much energy is stored in the magnetic field loops that break up as a result of this process,

you end up with a solar flare or solar eruption of different proportions.

The amount of energy released, obviously, most of the time is relatively small.

You don't get much of an impact on Earth.

I mean, there are these plumes of hot gas coming out of the sun that many times they're missing the Earth.

They're going in a direction that they don't intercept the Earth.

And

But every now and then there is a big eruption that sends a plume of hot gas that would collide with Earth and cause a lot of damage to our technologies.