The Sun is a second generation star, Professor Silk discusses what we can learn from its ancestors: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/the-first-stars
Eddington once famously said that a physicist on a cloud-bound planet could predict that there are stars. The first series of lectures will be devoted to fundamental questions that have simple answers. What is a star? What is a galaxy? All devolves around knowing their masses. Why should a star like the sun weigh in at two billion trillion trillion tonnes? No more, no less. And all other stars, countless in number, are between a tenth of a hundred times the mass of the sun.
This leads us into a description of the first stars in the universe.
The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/the-first-stars

Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 1,800 lectures free to access or download from the website.
Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk
Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollege

Support the Show.