The scientist told how the sun sounds
News / / January 02, 2021
The sun seems to us to be an absolutely quiet and serene object that does not make any sounds. And this is partly true, because the laws of physics do not allow sound to propagate in the vacuum of space. However, what would the sun sound like in the earth's atmosphere? Heliophysicist Craig DeForest from the Southwest Research Institute tried to answer this question. His words leads scientific journal Astronomy.
According to the scientist, the Sun should be unusually loud, because it is an endless whirlpool of superheated plasma. The nuclear reactions driving the star cause massive convective cells of heated gas to continually rise and fall across its entire surface. To grasp the magnitude of this process, you must imagine something the size of Texas emerging from beneath the surface, burning up and sinking in just five minutes. This is an incredibly noisy process, the scientist added.
If you believe DeForest's preliminary calculations, then each of these cells emits from 100 to 300 watts of sound energy per square meter - this is about the same as one police siren. And since the surface area of the Sun is about 10,000 times that of the Earth, imagine that 10,000 Earths are covered with police sirens, and everyone is “screaming”.
The Earth is at a distance of 150 million km from the Sun, therefore, if the sound were not interrupted in a vacuum, then in in the vicinity of our planet, its volume could reach 100 decibels - as in a modern rock concert. According to DeForest, the sound itself would be like a dull roar. During the day in such conditions it would be unbearable to live, but at night, with the turn of the globe, we might even be able to talk.
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