NASA Issues verdict on whether the Sun makes a noise

The Sun is one of the largest objects in our solar system
-Credit:Getty


The Sun is the largest object in our solar system. It is 109 times wider than Earth and can reach temperatures of 15 million degrees at its core. We see the fascinating object everyday and are able to feel its rays, but does it make a noise?

It is difficult to imagine the noise such a powerful fireball could make, or maybe you have never actually thought about it. Chris Impey, an astronomer and professor at the University of Arizona, told Popular Science: "The Sun doesn’t make noise because noise, or sound, needs a medium to carry it. The space between us and the Sun is almost a perfect vacuum, so sound can’t travel through that.”

He continued: “So whatever the Sun is doing, it’s not transmitting sound to us.” He added that the Sun has oscillations and vibrations which means in a sense, it does have some of the elements of sound within it. The astronomer says sun activity is not the sort of thing human ears evolved to perceive.

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The Science website article addressed audio clips, seemingly from the sun which have previously been released. Chris revealed: “It’s quite a clever idea in science, where you take—in astronomy particularly—you take some distant phenomenon, like a galaxy; or a black hole, sucking in matter or the atmospheric motions of Jupiter or the sun itself, and you turn the signals that are happening in that domain into sound waves, just as a way of realizing them in a way that’s not visual.”

NASA have also spoken about the 'sounds of the sun' as their Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) has captured the dynamic movement of the Sun’s atmosphere for over 20 years. They say "we can hear the Sun’s movement — all of its waves, loops and eruptions — with our own ears."

The space agency stated in 2018 "the Sun is not silent. The low, pulsing hum of our star’s heartbeat allows scientists to peer inside, revealing huge rivers of solar material flowing around" Data from SOHO, sonified by the Stanford Experimental Physics Lab, captures the Sun’s natural vibrations and provides scientists with a concrete representation of its dynamic movements. These vibrations allow scientists to study a range of complex motions inside the Sun, from solar flares to coronal mass ejections.