Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey,
Speaker 1: brain Stuff, learn volga about here. One of the weird
Speaker 1: things about space is that things don't always conform to
Speaker 1: what would seem like common sense. Take the Sun, for example.
Speaker 1: You think that the Sun's surface would be hotter than
Speaker 1: its outer atmosphere since the surface is closer to the
Speaker 1: nuclear furnace at the Sun's core. After all, when you're
Speaker 1: sitting in front of a fireplace, it feels hotter when
Speaker 1: you get closer to it. Right. The problem is the
Speaker 1: Sun doesn't work that way. Let's talk about the structure
Speaker 1: of the Sun. It is composed of plasma. It has
Speaker 1: no solid surface. However, it still has a defined structure.
Speaker 1: The innermost part of the Sun is called the core.
Speaker 1: This is where gravity causes enough pressure to create the
Speaker 1: nuclear fusion of hydrogen atoms, creating atoms of helium, plus
Speaker 1: a burst of energy that's emitted as various forms of
Speaker 1: electromagnetic radiation of everything from ultraviolet light and X rays
Speaker 1: too visible and infrared light, to microwaves and radio waves.
Speaker 1: That energy slowly moves out through two layers that surround
Speaker 1: the core, called the radiative zone and the convective zone.
Speaker 1: Until the energy hits the photosphere, which is the part
Speaker 1: of the Sun that we can see, and that's often
Speaker 1: referred to as the surface of the Sun. Above that,
Speaker 1: you've got a couple layers of atmosphere, first the chromosphere
Speaker 1: and then the corona. Now, the weird thing that we're
Speaker 1: talking about today is that as you progress from the
Speaker 1: core through to the photosphere, the layers of the sun
Speaker 1: get colder, but then as you go through the outer
Speaker 1: atmospheric layers they get hotter. Again. Of course, this is
Speaker 1: all relative. The photosphere is indeed pretty hot, between six thousand,
Speaker 1: seven hundred and eleven thousand degrees fahrenheit, which is some
Speaker 1: three thousand, seven hundred to six thousand, two hundred degrees elseus,
Speaker 1: which is hot. But the further you get from the
Speaker 1: Sun's surface, the hotter the atmosphere seems to get. The
Speaker 1: temperature more than doubles through the chromosphere, and at the corona,
Speaker 1: which is about one thousand, two hundred miles or two
Speaker 1: thousand one kilometers from the surface, its soars to an
Speaker 1: astonishing nine hundred thousand degrees fahrenheit or five hundred thousand
Speaker 1: degrees celsius. Besides the Sun, some other stars also exhibit
Speaker 1: this curious pattern, and for a long time, scientists struggled
Speaker 1: to figure out why. They developed a hypothesis that magneto
Speaker 1: hydrodynamic waves distribute energy from below the photosphere directly up
Speaker 1: to the corona, almost like an express train with no
Speaker 1: local stops. Magneto hydrodynamics combines the studies of magnetic fields
Speaker 1: and fluids that conduct electricity. The plasma that makes up
Speaker 1: the Sun is an extreme example of such a fluid.
Speaker 1: In British researchers used advances and imaging technology to investigate
Speaker 1: the Sun's chromosphere, that layer in between the photosphere and
Speaker 1: the corona and actually examine some of these magneto hydrodynamic waves.
Speaker 1: Their calculations confirmed that the waves could be responsible for
Speaker 1: transporting energy to the corona and heating that layer. Richard Morton,
Speaker 1: a scientist for the UK's Northumbria University, explained when announcing
Speaker 1: the discovery quote, our observations have permitted us to estimate
Speaker 1: the amount of energy transported by the magnetic waves, and
Speaker 1: these estimates reveal that the waves energy meets the energy
Speaker 1: requirement for the unexplained temperature increase in the corona. Today's
Speaker 1: episode is based on the article weird physics. The closer
Speaker 1: you get to the Sun, the cooler it gets on
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot Com, written by Patrick J. Tiger.
Speaker 1: Brain Stuff is production of I heart Radio impart partnership
Speaker 1: with how stuff Works dot Com, and it is produced
Speaker 1: by Tyler Playing and Ramsay Young. Four more podcasts my
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