 The bell telephone system brings you one of a series of programs on science to understand nature's laws Title's okay. Now. Let's test that first animation roll to Okay, hold it now sharpen the focus Right hold roll to Doctor, how is the sudden born? Don't know exactly. You're a scientist and you don't know could use my imagination But you're the fiction writer Imagination well, we could ask mr. Sun himself Yes, if we had a magic wand Sure sure you've got it magic your science and my magic We open up our story of our mr. Sun with a little fantasy You know showmanship go back into time show the birth of the Sun not a time stardust Here we'll turn back the clock. Oh, that'll only take you back 12 hours. Oh All right We'll open up the curtain of our imagination This will be our magic screen yours will be just for facts Pull back the curtains of our magic screen will dream up a clock. There you are a clock That's been ticking since time began our solar system Wound up by father time himself. Do you see what I'm seeing? We're certainly Maybe I could talk to him, huh? Hey father time. How long has that Sun clock been going a few billion years? Why? Well, could you unwind it for us? Unwind time man. Are you crazy? Well, I'm a fiction writer We're auditioning a show about our mr. Sun and I thought that Joe about me Well, well about time Hi Yeah, we were wondering how it all happened at the beginning Nobody knows what happened at the beginning. Oh, come on pop unwind us. They want to see how I was born you You old hot gas bag you keep still now. Don't flip your sickle pop. The man says it's just a show He's a romantic fool if you want facts ask your scientists Oh, we've got doctor research here for facts But what I need right now is something to open this thing up with a bang. You know what I mean? Certainly my story should be colorful romantic not just facts here. I'll tell you how it should open Wait a minute. I'm telling this story. You're just imaginary quiet. You want to show don't you? Go on Yes, sir Set the stage for me. Oh Yes Get an Academy Award ready Hey, he's taking over. How do you like that? I like it. Let him go on Music morning brother bird Brother mountain you brother gal Brother b. Good morning all of you. Of course. What I really am is a star An average every day type of star Billions like me I remember when primitive man first began to look up to gaze in wonderment at the stars and planets Sweeping across the face of the sky That primitive curiosity was the beginning of all your science Of course, they had some pretty odd notions about me Some thought I was an enormous beetle crumbling a fiery ball across the heavens The ancient eskimos thought I was a little man wearing thick furs to keep myself warm But to most I was a god With fancy names and wardrobes in Babylon, I was shamash And my sun temples were observatories In persia. I was mithras And to ancient egypt. I was the great god ra Glory to the great sun god Getting this well head Uh, but the name I like best Was febus Apollo the greeks always didn't have a word for it in my case It was handsome Apollo racing across the sky in his fiery chariot Making heavenly music on his golden ukulele Oh, that was for me. I loved it And then along came another greek to spoil it all A greek who would rather think than worship sun gods An exagerus was his name The sun is not a god or a person It is a mass of red hot stone only 40 miles across and 4 000 miles away For blaspheming against the beautiful Apollo an exagerus was banished from Athens And I wasn't a bit sorry for him But man had fallen for this new and fascinating mistress his brain Thinking began spreading like the measles everybody got the bug the greeks with their logic and philosophy The hindu's with their algebra and your present number system the arabs with their early instruments like the astrolabe And today instead of temples rituals and hymns to the sun It's domes gadgets charts and numbers I'm demoted to a specimen a pile of facts and figures A big blob of mass holding little blobs of mass together with gravity instead of with love I think you're all through Who's all through earth man? He's had it why you flaming idiot to haven't even started yet In worshiping me ancient man was reaching for the great light beyond but modern man He's got all the answers Mr. Sun that you mind if I butt in a moment Who are you? Who me? Oh, I'm the Never mind. Thank you very much. Goodbye Would you mind if we listened in See here, you're not even real. I just made you up. You go wind your clock. No, let them stay. I like your magic father time My name's research Who a scientist Hmm Howdy dr. Research I'd like to hear what you have to say about golden boy here Well, it's a delightful experience talking directly to you and to mr. Sun especially for a scientist I was just going to relate a few facts about mr. Sun facts If you're going to tell my story don't give the people equations and figures Give them the real old doubt. Tell them what I mean to them They've forgotten that when they eat corn or bread or grapes or meat. They're eating sunlight Their houses furniture cars their nylons Yes, even their moonshine is sunshine Tell them if it wasn't for me, they'd have no eyes Because there'd be nothing to see That's enough. You're getting purple. Why if I put my light out every living thing on earth would be frozen stiff And you scientists who know would be just as cold and stiff as the people that don't know Through blowing sunspots Yes Then apologize to dr. Research Oh Well I'm sorry brother research No apology necessary and mr. Sun is almost right Almost Yes, mr. Sun your logic is a little on the romantic side too You say that you don't like facts and yet you've just given us quite a list of them This may turn out to be fun No, mr. Sun. We haven't got all the answers Science has just opened the book Yeah, then seeking for more knowledge. We too in a way are reaching for the great light beyond Doctor That's it. That's it. What's it the gimmick Come into my office here We put the show on for him for the sun. Sure is a tough audience Science shows sun were not all through you get it could be boring to him could be Hey, you keep your corona on what science has found out about you is more exciting than any fiction You stick around you'll see what we really don't know very much about it. Oh, we know plenty about it. What about the television people? Never mind him. Just think who's we got a real show here. Well, you remember where you come in I remember the weather the few being cutting on me if I get stuck in on you here, but come on rolling rolling roll to Here we go Although mr. Sun is 93 million miles away and it takes his life eight minutes to reach us He's really quite close The light from the next nearest star traveling at 186,000 miles per second takes over four years to get to us We know mr. Sun is so large our earth is barely visible alongside him It would take some 340 worlds like beads on a string to make a necklace around his shining sphere How much does mr. Sun weigh? 1,000 worlds 100,000 No, sir. He weighs as much as 330,000 mother earth We also know that mr. Sun is not solid or liquid But a fiery ball of hot glowing gases consisting of some 95% hydrogen and helium and a few percent all other elements We know that this huge cloud of hot gases would expand float away Disappear into space unless gravity squeezed it together into a tight sphere The gases at the center of the sun are so densely packed by gravity that they're about 100 times heavier than water And the pressure is around 1 billion tons to the square inch While at the surface the gases are so thin the pressure is only about one pound to the square inch We know too that the temperature at the core of the sun is incredibly hot around 30 million degrees fahrenheit While at the surface it drops down to just about 10,000 degrees But here's a strange thing as we go out from the sun into the corona The temperature goes up again to over 1 million degrees at the outer edges Tell them why dr. Research We don't know why you don't Well, what is the corona anyway? We don't actually know that yet. Oh But we do know there's more to mr. Sun and the shining surface We normally see which we call a photosphere or sphere of light Only when the moon moves between us and the sun and covers the photosphere completely in a total eclipse Can we see the rest of mr. Sun's thin atmosphere the beautiful and mysterious corona? For many many years scientists have lugged their instruments to all parts of the globe chasing eclipses Expedition spending months just for a two or three minute opportunity to see Measure and photograph the eclipsed sun Sometimes heavy clouds failure complete washout Sometimes light clouds measurements uncertain But on happy occasions Perfect conditions the corona is studied and photographed in the fullness of its glory Your corona is most puzzling to us mr. Sun Hmm We know that it rotates with you But at no two eclipses does it look just the same It pulsates changes shape and at times extends out millions of miles Why is that? Just one of the many things we still don't know about the sun. Uh, look, uh Have we better tell him something we do know? Want to hear any more mr. Sun? I like your pictures of me Got any more? Oh, yes lots roll six The camera is one of our main tools Now here's a normal picture of you taken by direct sunlight. It's rather flat your face has little expression But about 60 years ago dr. George Ellery Hale of america And dr. Henri de la France conceived this ingenious instrument called the spectro heliograph It filters out all the light waves except the light from some particular glowing atom as for instance hydrogen Let's look at a normal white light picture of the sun again Now here taken at the same time is a spectro heliogram that photographed only the red light from glowing hydrogen atoms Now your face is interesting reveals character Here's another spectro heliogram taken at the same time That photographed only the violet light from incandescent calcium atoms, which tells us even more about you With the spectro heliograph Dr. Robert R. McMath of the McMath-Hulbert Observatory near Pontiac, Michigan Made the first time lapse motion pictures of the prominences and wrinkles on the face of the sun From his pictures and from the many thousands of photographs taken at observatories all over the world Particularly at the mount wilson observatory Deal about mr. Sun especially about those much talked of sunspots that mystified god Sunspots there are such things of course. Oh, yeah, they're not just something that Scientists see when they're tired. Oh, they're very real, but very mysterious They mystified Galileo went through his original telescope. He first saw them moving daily across the face of the sun They've been mystifying us ever since Spots can appear singly like this one or in groups like these And quite often in distinct pairs When photographed by red hydrogen light, they look something like giant violent tornadoes seen from above Spots range in size from mere pinpoints just a few hundred miles across into which you could drop the british isles To huge ones into which you could drop 100 planets as big as the earth Spots looked dark although they really aren't because they're cooler than the rest of the surface 7 000 degrees as against 10 000 degrees of the surface Also over the years We notice a strange fluctuation in the number of spots Increasing to a maximum decreasing to a minimum in more or less regular 11-year cycles Which many of us believe affect our weather our crops and the growth of our trees One of the most astonishing mysteries revealed by study of spots, mr. Sun Is that your equator or the middle of you rotates faster than the rest of you the middle rotates faster Yes, uh, for instance if a line of spots were placed like runners at a starting line From the sun's north to the south pole And at a signal raced around the sun they would end up like this Equator wins in 25 and one third days Half north and half south tie for second time 27 and a half days. Why is that? Uh, you don't know why okay? Have you got any more pictures of me? Hey, would it please you to know mr. Glory push that you've been photographed more than all the hollywood stars put together The most dramatic pictures roll seven the most dramatic pictures are taken with a coronagraph Which creates automatic total eclipses whenever the sun is shining This very remarkable instrument was first constructed by dr. Bernard leo of france in 1930 Today there are improved coronagraphs at the high altitude observatory at climax, colorado under the direction of dr. Walter roberts And at the air force installation of sacramento peak new mexico presided over by dr. J w evans The first user of the coronagraph in america was dr. Donald h mensel of harvard university What happens in these red hydrogen coronagraph motion pictures in one second? Actually took place in about five minutes on the sun The small sphere you see here Represents the size of the earth in comparison with the sun Your surface mr. Sun's a storm may see a violent motion Small spicules or geysers like these continually burst from blisters on the surface and jet up like little fountains If you can call five or 10,000 miles up little compare them to the size of the earth Big flame like eruptions like these are called prominences They're vast clouds of gas that sometimes float idly and other times shoot out at thousands of miles per minute As if they never heard of gravity Sometimes they rise in graceful ribbons or tangle streamers beautiful beautiful some surge up like gigantic geysers Others flow sidewise and downward at times forming natural bridges Portions of the prominences may even break off and go floating aways in this picture But the baffling part is that most prominences flow downward Gases materializing from seemingly nowhere and flowing down into sun spot areas for days at a time Coronal rain it's sometimes called Where does it come from? Oh, of course when it rains on earth, we don't actually see the rain go up either We only see it come down although we know it evaporates up from the seven seas But where coronal rain comes from we can only guess as yet Give them the whopper doc biggest solar explosion ever recorded greatest photographic shot in history On june 4th 1946 a great arch of gas hundreds of times as big as the earth Rows up at a speed of 400,000 miles per hour The arch expanded clear out of range of the instruments at climax in less than an hour and a half I remember that one Sure blew my top that day as we heard you roll 15 You heard me Oh, yes, we hear you every day you not only send us light waves, but you broadcast radio waves Which we're able to pick up quite clearly at special radio astronomy stations, which receive radio signals from outer space Here's a sample of the radio message you send us on one of your noisier days In australia, they've recently done some brilliant work with radio astronomy Dr. E. G. Bowen heads the group of radio astronomers It's only in the past few years that we have discovered some strange things in the sky Radio waves coming to us from many places in outer space Radio astronomy is a brand new exciting tool for scientists And with it we found out quite a bit about you, mr. Sun through the noises you make I'm beginning to feel like a goldfish. You got him going doctor Well, doesn't all his spouting and erupting have some effect on the earth? Oh, yes tremendous attic earth Roll eight Well, for instance when a large flare flashes up around the sunspot area It immediately sends out a burst of powerful ultraviolet rays that hit the earth in eight minutes But it also sprays streams of slower electrified fragments of atoms out into spaces if from a hose This solar spray of fine particles usually misses the earth, but at times the earth is in its path Now the earth is a magnet with north and south magnetic poles and a magnetic field around it The spray of minute particles shot from the sun Which takes some 30 hours to reach the earth is deflected toward the poles by the earth's magnetic field As this solar dust star dust you might call it Comes down into our atmosphere near the poles and collides with air molecules It creates the most beautiful spectacle of the aurora also called the northern and southern lights Dr. C. W. Garth line of cornell university took this unique time-lapse motion picture of the actual aurora borealis The earth's rotation produces the apparent motion of the stars in the background But uh, the effects of these ultraviolet bursts from the sun are not so beautiful voltage fluctuates radio communications are disturbed And uh, although our radio engineers have performed near miracles in protecting our radio waves from this solar sniping Uh, uh, dr. Roll seven C sometimes this happens We take you now to london for a direct report from sam johnson Come in london This is sam johnson There's an air of tense expectancy here in london this morning the prime That radio I'm ranging from trusted and now back to new york What an engineer Wasn't the shoe no, it wasn't the shoe Let's recreate what actually happened in terms of atmosphere and radio waves Radio waves normally move in a straight line, but about 50 miles high in our atmosphere There's an electrified layer called the ionosphere that reflects radio waves making it possible to bounce them around the earth Now let's listen to sam johnson again. This is sam johnson There's an air of tense expectancy here in london Suddenly a bright flare occurs on the sun Burst of ultraviolet rays disrupts the ionosphere this morning the prime minister announced But radio engineers are right on the ball Bill, london's folding another s i d. Yeah, yep. I've got another frequency ready for you Uh, not yet. We're not a minute and s i d means a sudden ionospheric disturbance, which is unpredictable But usually in a matter of minutes the ionospheric layer reforms again And that was the momentous statement the prime minister read to us this morning And now back to new york But when big reasons of the sun are intensely active The spray of solar particles that causes the aurora can disturb communications for hours even days, but uh, this type is predictable Oh, yes, fortunately it usually is and since radio communication is so vital to the services Airlines radio stations telephone companies ships at sea Recently observatories all over the world have begun to keep watch on the sun and make up a worldwide radio warning service At the high altitude observatory at climax, colorado at the air force observatory at sacramento peep At kota canal india In japan In stations all over the globe Observers keep tabs on you mr. Sun Send in information to the central collecting agencies such as the radio storm warning service of the national bureau of standards Women under alan shaftley analyze the data and try to predict when the solar storm will strike the earth Especially the vital north atlantic communication lines Then by radio By teletype by phone The warning goes out severe magnetic storm will affect north atlantic circuits Lower frequencies or use southern routes That's fine But doctor research what has puzzled you scientists most about the sun Roll nine. Oh, yeah, even I can give you that in one word energy This lady's parasol has one and one half horsepower of sunshine continually bored on it Enough to run her washing machine sewing machine refrigerator and vacuum cleaner In full sunlight our family car receives almost enough sun power to run it if we only knew how to use solar energy directly At the common rate of two cents per kilowatt hour The sun sends the earth one billion dollars worth of energy every second And it's coming to us free Five minutes worth would pay our national debt One minute's worth of the energy that hits the earth would pay the total annual income tax of all united states citizens. Oh happy day Yet what the earth receives is only a minute fraction of the whole Only one part and two billion of the total solar energy The rest of the five hundred thousand billion billion horsepower goes out into space How does the sun generate this enormous amount of power doctor research? Yes, I don't eat drink or take vitamins. I never sleep or rest Then how do I do it brother scientist? Well, we know at least part of your secret mouth But to what makes other stars in the universe shine thermo nuclear reaction It's the key word that wound up the universe thermo nuclear Eight to five. They've made a hydrogen bomb We certainly have mr. Sun and the news rocked the world But with you it's old stuff The equivalent of four billion hydrogen bombs have been going off inside you every second for some four billion years Give or take a billion 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 five hundred and sixty million tons of helium each second five sixty four to five sixty Where did the missing four million tons go just disappear disappears as mass as matter But reappears as light heat and all sorts of radiation Quite a trick stroll saw making four million tons disappear four million tons that he is Roll 12 I brought along a trickster friend of mine thermal 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 four. What is hydrogen? The smallest atom from which you build all the older atoms. So we will weigh the hydrogen scale Each bottle weighs exactly 100 ounces for bottle 400 ounces. Remember that 400 ounces So now carbon this is carbon A piece of coal for you. That is what I start with hydrogen and carbon. So Now I will heat them 30 million degrees. I will heat them how? In a hydrogen bomb it is done by exploding an ordinary atom bomb to ignite the hydrogen bomb For the stars they do it by pressure gravity like our mr. Son So now I play mr. Son and heat the hydrogen and the carbon to 30 million degrees Fire Now I am ready number one hydrogen come I thermo now give the command Oh, what have we here nitrogen the gas what makes four fifths of the air you breathe Now number two and number three hydrogen come fusion Now we have oxygen the other fifth of the air you breathe number four We have helium what you feel ballooned with if they are 30 million degrees hot 30 million degrees It is not children playing with matches The four hydrogens come out one helium the carbon comes back the same you see same way no change That's why we call this the carbon cycle now. We weigh the helium Should weigh 400 ounces like the hydrogen. Oh, yes, naturally But it can be the helium weighs three ounces less than the hydrogen. Where did the three ounces go? That is the magic of the stars that is the secret of the hydrogen bomb I show you Come back three ounces Here is where they weigh in They change ounces that completely disappeared as matter That energy is enough to raise the empire state building 2,500 miles high 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 Mr. Son, you do not annihilate or destroy just two or three ounces But four 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 on a bicycle tire gets hotter and hotter as you pump it Finally the temperature in your core reached the necessary 30 million degrees 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'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, which brings up a point How long before he runs out of this here now hydrogen fuel? Oh, he still has about 98 of his fuel left But 50 hundred billion years from now mr. Son, 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 doctor research your big What are those two big problems you spoke of doctor research? The first is the age old problem of food roll five and boy the number of miles 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 later the population climbed to two and one half billion five times as many Of all 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 is practically exploding. I bet he doesn't know who grows his food for him Oh, yeah, we know quite a bit about that That is he does roll 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 percent 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 Sub microscopic little one-man factories turning out more sugar than all the ships and railroads in the world could carry And the headman of each factory is a little green molecule called chlorophyll The only engineer with the know-how about this still secret life process Chlorophyll is so small and so secretive that not even the most powerful microscopes can spy on him 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 bang well find out for yourself Quiet Piece by piece he adds more sunlight to his sugarcane 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 sauce 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 trump 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 zooplankton Which are eaten by little fish Which are eaten by bigger fish Which are eaten by still bigger fish Fish are ultimately made of chlorophyll sunshine cake And when we catch them and can them We're catching and canning sunlight In fact all animals feed on sunshine cake in one form or another See the 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 eight minutes from the surface of the sun But had taken 20 million years to find its way to the surface From the sun's central furnace So you see the energy that makes junior run That makes a porpoise leap And 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 in the 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 two tons of vegetable matter per year But if all the lights you send us could be used by chlorophyll We could raise 2000 tons of food per acre per year a little chlorophyll may know the big secret But he's awfully inefficient Trunks and branches and roots out of it, but you can't eat what you're looking for is a plant that's all fruit Oh, there is such a plant all edible too, and it multiplies faster than rabbits But you scientists are too dumb to find it Roll ten found it in fresh water lakes a kind of green algae called chlorella A tiny one-celled plant that has learned the mathematical trick of multiplying by dividing Each cell gives birth to from four to sixteen daughter cells which all grow up and repeat the process Chlorella contains fats carbohydrates and up to 50 protein and is all edible all fruit is mr. Chlorophyll would say All over the world scientists are doing research on chlorella in japan Dr. Hiroshi Tamiya of the toku kawa institute has done some of the most interesting and practical work For their food is definitely a problem Into these troughs water containing chloralic 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 chloralic crop is harvested after washing and drying the fine powder looks like green flour Mrs. Tamiya 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 chlorella can convert sunlight into some 20 tons of plant matter Just one or two tons of an ordinary crop But there's a second great problem facing us eventually 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 and water wheels The machine age was born Modern machines need to be fed to fed with fuels Where do we get the fuel from the big fuel man himself? Over the ages mr. Sun was kind enough to store them up for it Chomp for living sunshine 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 stave off the run for some time But there's only so much uranium and thorium in the world and 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 fellows anybody working on getting power direct from old blowhard here Oh, yes, but not nearly enough Roll six feet some years ago. Dr. Charles Greeley 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 mont louis For metal research at high temperatures in india Dr. S. Botnagar 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 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 thus 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 Telkis has designed a model house in massachusetts In which solar heat is ingeniously collected stored and distributed throughout the whole house Now these are more or less well known mechanical ways of using sun power directly 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 cake that makes electricity out of your sunlight Oh, yes, you mean the solar battery. Yeah, that's hardly even a cookie yet. Let alone a cake doc. That's big news Well, it was 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 shapen calvin fuller and gerald pierce You know, although this is quite expensive at the moment the simplicity of this sunshine wafer startling A big one for a glory push doc. I'd be delighted We'll 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 It's Sunday go to meeting name is silicon dioxide Separate out the oxygen and the bits of seaweed bottle tops and other odds and ends And we have left a metal 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 mixed early Couldn't cool until it crystallizes Then from the arsenic flavored silicon roll slice off a razor thin wafer Put the wafer skin to the oven Fill oven with a boron gas And bake the white heat and 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 Presto the motor starts running with the efficiency of an automobile and nothing is used up but the sunshine which is free Ain't that something well, I'll be darned So you see in a solar battery It's energy from the sun that moves the electricity which in turn rotates motors telephone lines by charging storage batteries But the solar battery isn't all there's other important research in changing sunlight into power Dr. E. I. Rabinowitz 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 a process in which sunlight Decomposes water back into oxygen and hydrogen the hydrogen being a storable fuel Another possibility Phosphores are chemical powders that absorb sunlight and can give it back slowly in the dark I read where westinghouse engineers predict a wallpaper containing Phosphors 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. Son 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 the cheap cold and oil still available to us and but doctor What about atomic power all 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. Son What if you don't find ways to use my free sunshine for fuel? Then the machine age is over The 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 out swim any fish Without a fellow on him he can fly faster and higher and farther than any eagle He can send his eyes and ears hundreds of miles into space where he's never even been And his pride opened the secrets of the atom. Please never even see When he's fueled wrong row Man's mind and imagination will meet the challenge and invent undreamed of ways to use the free sunlight God showers down upon him Just remember Somebody must love you very much That planet that you live on is not like all the rest, but just the right size The right temperature The right atmosphere The right composition Everything just right to produce the biggest miracle of all 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 researched to 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 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 is 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 caboodle to greener pastures On some other be like it here. Don't change on us, mr. Son We used to worship. He was an unknown god But now that we know you better We love you as our great and good friend. So keep on shining mr. Son You put in the bank. Thanks for feeding our animals insects All the fish in the sea And thanks to be of your good morning st. Francis Be praised my lord and what you have created Above all else be praised in our brother master son Scientific matter for the series who have just seen our thanks to the special advisors who have suggested and checked the scientific material Phone system is indebted to all these men and to many institutions for the generous support They have given this venture in public education through entertainment