The Sun is just one of trillions of stars that populate the universe, but out of all
of the stars that have ever existed, it is possibly the most extraordinary.
Why?
Because it nurtures the Earth, the only place, as far as we currently know, which allows
life to feel its warmth and see its light.
But what if we could hear the Sun as well?
What would it sound like if every morning the sunrise brought with it not just light
and warmth, but also noise?
Much like the video I made about the real sound of a black hole, which I'll link to
at the end of this video, we cannot directly hear the Sun from Earth.
The laws of physics prevent sound from travelling through the vacuum of space.
It needs a medium to move through, such as a gas or water, for example.
But the Sun does make a tremendous amount of noise, it may hang silently in our sky,
but travel the 93 million miles, or 150 million kilometres to the Sun, and it would sound
deafening.
So as part of an intriguing thought experiment that I found online, let's find out what the
awesome power of our star would sound like if we could hear it from the surface of Earth.
First, we must assume for a moment that we are in an alternative universe, where sound
can propagate through the vacuum of space.
Imagine that space was full of dense gas, for example.
Then we must assume that sound waves produced by the Sun would make it all the way to Earth
without breaking up like waves do on a beach.
Only then can we imagine what it would be like as our noisy Sun slowly appeared above
the horizon, bringing forth a new day but also the colossal roar of chaos.
A noise so loud, according to Scientists, that you wouldn't even hear your family say
say "good morning".
To understand how loud the Sun really is, we first need to find out a little bit about
how it works.
The Sun is a giant sphere of unimaginable hot plasma that is powered by nuclear fusion
reactions deep within its core.
It has no solid mass, meaning it doesn't have a distinct, solid surface like the Earth.
Instead, it is composed of layers made up almost entirely of hydrogen and helium, and
so the surface of the Sun is considered as the first visible layer.
It is the layer called the photosphere and is where a hell of a lot of sound would be
produced.
This incredible "real" footage is of a small region of the photosphere, revealing dynamic
grain like structures moving and evolving in shape.
Providing a detailed look at how active the surface is.
These moving structures are called convection cells, and occur when superheated plasma from
deep within the Sun rises, cools and then sinks back down in a process called convection.
The same process can be seen when water is bubbling in a boiling pot, for example.
On the Sun, there is estimated to be millions of these at any given time, and each cell
is about the size of Texas.
So you can imagine just how violent and loud one of these structures would be.
According to some calculations that I found online, the surface of the Sun, which remember
is an extremely turbulent place and so these numbers are only estimated, emits around 200
watts of sound power per square metre of surface area.
Which means that the Sun's surface sound would equate to about 329 decibels.
Making the Sun unimaginably loud.
As a frame of reference, a standard vacuum cleaner produces around 75 decibels, a chain
saw about 110 decibels, but once you go above 125 decibels, you would start to feel pain
in your ears, above 160 and your eardrums would likely burst, while sounds above 185
decibels can impact your organs so severely that it can cause death.
But the Sun is extremely far away, at an average distance of about 93 million miles or about
150 million kilometres.
It is so far away in fact, that it takes light more than 8 minutes to reach us.
So if sound could travel through the vacuum of space within this alternative universe
that we have created, then the Sun's sound waves would be somewhat weakened by the time
it arrived at Earth.
This would mean that every time the Sun rose above the horizon, we would hear its chaotic
noise at around 100 decibels, which is about the same as standing near a speaker at a rock
concert.
All day.
Ever day.
Of course, at night the sound would fade dramatically, providing some relief and possible the chance
of having a conversation.
According to scientists who study the Sun, the sound itself would be like a dull roar,
due to the number of different frequencies that make up the sound waves.
One article I found said it would be like standing next to Niagara falls all of the
time, just much louder.
So, the Sun, which is deafening up close, would still be extremely loud if we could
hear it from Earth, even though it is so far away.
It would be like a perpetual white noise machine, blaring with the intensity of a rock concert
at all hours of the day.
Which is incredible when you think of the distances involved.
Luckily for us, however, sound cannot travel through the vacuum of space.
But even if it could, life would have probably skipped the hearing part of evolution.
Either way, just as we were told as youngsters never to look directly at the Sun, we now
know never to listen directly to it either.
I hope you enjoyed this video.
If you want to explore more of the universe, check out some of my other videos, tap the
like button and subscribe, there's plenty more to come.
Thank you for watching, and I'll see you next time.