The Sun Is Weirder Than You Think
A science explainer that earns its wonder — trading the familiar ball-of-fire image for the actual, stranger physics of what lives inside our star.
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Cleo Abram takes viewers on an imaginary journey into the Sun, layer by layer, using recent science and interviews with NASA researchers to reveal how strange and poorly understood our star really is.
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What matters, in Yank’s words, each linked to where the source says it.
Parker Solar Probe is now the fastest human-made object, capable of travelling from London to Paris in two seconds.
In 1967, a major solar storm jammed US radars in Greenland, nearly triggering a nuclear war before Air Force solar physicists intervened.
Light trapped in the Sun's radiative zone takes on average 170,000 years to escape, meaning the energy you feel on your face is ancient.
The Sun's core converts about 4 million tons of matter into energy every second, yet its energy output per cubic metre is roughly similar to a lizard's metabolism.
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When you step outside and feel the Sun on your face, that energy has been traveling since before humans wore clothes.
Anchors the sun's 170,000-year internal journey in a human moment, making deep cosmic timescales personally felt.
In context
the vacuum of space in an 8-minute and 20-second journey. But in here, the plasma is so dense that light itself gets trapped, bouncing around like a pinball machine that takes on average 170,000 years to escape. So when you step outside and you feel the Sun on your face, that energy has been traveling since before humans wore clothes. We're now lost in the radiative zone. But wait, if the closest we've ever been to the Sun was way out there in the corona, how do we know what's going on way down in here? That is her job. "You know, there are people who study earthquakes and
When you step outside and you feel the Sun on your face, that energy has been traveling since before humans wore clothes.
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Your body, pound for pound, generates more energy than the core of the Sun.
Overturns the intuitive scale of solar power by placing the human body above the sun in energy density per unit mass.
In context
of hydrogen fused into helium every second with 4 million tons of matter converted straight into energy. Those numbers sound huge because they are. But what's really weird is in terms of how much energy is generated per cubic meter. The Sun's output is actually tiny. It's roughly similar to a lizard's metabolism. Your body, pound for pound generates more energy than the core of the Sun. But the Sun is way bigger than you think. How many Earths do you think you could fit inside the Sun? Assume you keep them round? 960,000. And if you melted them to get rid of the extra space,
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We are living not just with a star, but living in a star's atmosphere.
NASA's leading solar researcher reframes Earth's location as inside, not beside, the sun's atmosphere.
In context
He's in charge of all of NASA's research on the Sun. And he's saying if you zoom out to see our whole solar system and then zoom a little bit further, you'd see that our Sun's outer atmosphere actually swallows Earth and then keeps going. This is the heliosphere and it's huge. It goes about 100 times farther than the distance between Earth and the Sun. "We are living not just with a star, but living in a star's atmosphere, which is pretty cool." As we fly through it, we see that the heliosphere is made of the Sun blasting out these charged particles more and more as we fly
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The Sun is a musical instrument that plays many, many notes.
A scientist reframes the sun's pressure waves as music, setting up how helioseismology reads the solar interior.
In context
the surface to understand what's in between. Same idea in the Sun, but instead of earthquakes, it's... music. "Think of a drum." So these violent boiling outer layers of the Sun are constantly jiggling the inside parts with pressure waves like earthquakes through the Earth. And the jiggles of pressure waves is also called sound. "The Sun is a musical instrument that plays many, many notes." If we could hear the music, the different notes would tell us what the waves were traveling through. The problem is that we're 150 million km away with a big vacuum
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In 1967, a solar storm jammed US radar in northern Greenland; military commanders thought the Soviets had attacked and nearly launched a response before solar physicists intervened.
A near-nuclear launch in 1967 shows that misreading solar activity once nearly triggered war between superpowers.
In context
life is protected by our own magnetic field. It deflects most of those charged particles. So these storms don't affect life on Earth, but they do affect technology. "In 1967, it almost caused a nuclear war." Really?! "Yeah, so there was this huge storm. The US found its radars in, you know, northern Greenland jammed. They thought the Soviets had jammed. Fortunately, the US Air Force already had a solar physics group which could quickly say that no, no, no, put the planes back on standby." The Sun goes through cycles of activity that last about 11
In 1967, a solar storm The jammed US found its radars radar in you know, northern Greenland; jammed. They military commanders thought the Soviets had jammed. Fortunately, the US Air Force already had attacked and nearly launched a response before solar physicists intervened.
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