What the Sun actually sounds like as its ‘screaming’ sirens would deafen every human on Earth
What the Sun actually sounds like as its ‘screaming’ sirens would deafen every human on Earth
Ever wondered what the sun sounds like?
Well, wonder no long - as scientists have revealed what noises emit from our largest star.
Solar physicists from Stanford University have determined the solar surface noise of the sun, which we fortunately can't hear.
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If the sounds were able to pass through space, it would be 100 decibels by the time it reached us here on Earth, according to the American Academy of Audiology.
This equals out to tens of thousands of watts of energy generated per meter on the sun.
Why is the sun creating noise?
It's due to the constant flow of hot material on the surface and the sinking of cooled material towards the centre.
This creates a noise that is estimated to be 10x to the 100x the power of speakers at a rock concert.
Or to put it another way - really, really loud.
Astronomers found this out by recording acoustical pressure waves in the sun, using an instrument called the Michelson Doppler Imager.
It's currently mounted on the SOHO spacecraft, which circulates the sun around 1,000,000 miles away from Earth.
However, humans on Earth are unable to hear any of this because the sound waves emit at frequencies that are too low for the human ear to detect.
This is lucky for us - as the sound would be so loud that it would undoubtedly deafen every single person alive.
The sound has been noted to sound like 'screaming sirens'.
But now that scientists have sped up the waves by 42,000 times, we can hear the sounds of the sun for the first time.
The result is 42 days of compression compiled into a few seconds of audio.
Eerily, if the sun was to die and we could somehow hear it, we would be listening to its death for fourteen years afterwards due to the speed of sound.
When the sun will die is a topic of interest for scientists all over the world.
Some boffins from Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Harvard College Observatory and the Centre for Astrophysics gave their estimate in 2021.
After concluding that the sun was effectively 'middle aged', scientists estimated that the sun will die in around five billion years.
Whether or not anybody will be around to hear or see that happen, is something I'll leave you to think about.
But as it stands, it's cool that we don't have to listen to the sun screaming all the time.
There's enough noise here on Earth as it is.
Topics: Science, Space, Environment
Ben Thompson