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Speaker 1: Daniel, how did you get into physics in the first place.

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Speaker 1: You know, it's kind of embarrassingly cliche. It was basically

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Speaker 1: staring up at the night sky and just wondering about

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Speaker 1: the stars and everything out there. That's not really cliche,

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Speaker 1: you know. I think that's what gets most people interested

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Speaker 1: in physics. But it doesn't make me wonder about something.

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Speaker 1: You're wondering about my wondering. Well, if everyone's wondering about stars,

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Speaker 1: why don't they focus more on the star that's closest

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Speaker 1: to us, the Sun. I think it's a little bit

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Speaker 1: more dangerous to stare at the Sun than it is

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Speaker 1: to stare at the night sky. Why I didn't know

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Speaker 1: physics was so dangerous. You're living on the edge, the

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Speaker 1: edge of the Solar system. I'm taking lots of risks,

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Speaker 1: napping in my office every day. It was like a

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Speaker 1: sunny job. You got there. Hi am Orhand cartoonists and

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Speaker 1: the creator of PhD comics. Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm a

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Speaker 1: particle physicist and a professor at you see erline, and

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Speaker 1: I'm a big fan of the sunshine. Oh yeah, you're

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Speaker 1: a big sun bather. You like having a tan said

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Speaker 1: with those reflective mirrors. I don't embody every Southern California stereotype,

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Speaker 1: but I do enjoy a sunny day, you know, just

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Speaker 1: like lifts my mood. I've lived in places where it's

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Speaker 1: cloudy every day and it's just not as fun. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: the sun is pretty warm out here in Southern California,

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Speaker 1: and it's interesting because it means we're getting bathed by

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Speaker 1: science every day almost as sent the time. It certainly

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Speaker 1: affects our life. It grows all of our plans, that

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Speaker 1: controls the weather. It basically is in charge of everything

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Speaker 1: that happens on the surface of the Earth. And so

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Speaker 1: you think we might understand it a little bit better

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Speaker 1: than we do. Are you saying we need to shed

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Speaker 1: some sunlight on the sun? We need to uminate those mysteries.

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Speaker 1: Welcome to our podcast Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe,

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Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio in which we try

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Speaker 1: to shine a light on everything we do and don't

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Speaker 1: know about the universe. Our curiosity knows no bounds as

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Speaker 1: it flies from the surface of the Earth down to

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Speaker 1: the tiny particles all the way out to the workings

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Speaker 1: of the Sun. At the heart of our solar system,

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Speaker 1: the fiery fusion engine that powers everything, including life on

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Speaker 1: Earth and the sparkling stars in our sky. We dig

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Speaker 1: into all of those mysteries and try to explain all

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Speaker 1: of them to you as best we can. Yeah, because

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Speaker 1: it is a bright and sunny universe, shining bright with

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Speaker 1: amazing knowledge. We're ready for us to bathe in it

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Speaker 1: and take it in and become an intent our brains,

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Speaker 1: I guess, to make them more colorful and knowledgeable about

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Speaker 1: how things work and why things are the way they are.

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Speaker 1: I really like that picture of the universe as sending

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Speaker 1: us information, is beaming us clues about how the universe works. Because,

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Speaker 1: as we've often limited, we are trapped here on this

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Speaker 1: little rock, mostly unable to physically explore the universe, but

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Speaker 1: we can decode those signals. The universe is zapping us

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Speaker 1: information about what's going on elsewhere, letting us put the

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Speaker 1: pieces together to try to build a mental model of

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Speaker 1: what is happening far far away. Yeah, and it's pretty amazing.

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Speaker 1: We are in a little tiny corner of a galaxy,

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Speaker 1: in a tiny corner of a supercluster of galaxies, in

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Speaker 1: a tiny corner of the universe, and yet just from

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Speaker 1: the light we get from other suns out there in

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Speaker 1: the universe were able to kind of piece together a

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Speaker 1: huge picture of the entire universe. It really is incredible

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Speaker 1: how much we do know about things happening far far away.

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Speaker 1: We have models of little stars and big stars, and

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Speaker 1: star lifetimes and star deaths and star explosions and star implosions,

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Speaker 1: all just from watching from this little rocky perch in

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Speaker 1: the suburbs of the Milky Way. And that knowledge has

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Speaker 1: been developed over many, many years, people staying up late

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Speaker 1: at night, freezing their bones to look up in the

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Speaker 1: night sky and take careful notes, and developing fancy new

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Speaker 1: technology to take better pictures of what's going on out there,

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Speaker 1: and more recently actually sending probes out to explore our

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Speaker 1: neighborhood and try to learn a little bit closer up

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Speaker 1: what's going on. Yeah, because we can learn a lot

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Speaker 1: about stars and also about the star that's closest to us,

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Speaker 1: the Sun. It's kind of easy to forget that the

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Speaker 1: Sun is a star. You know, like, if you're an

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Speaker 1: alien in another planet and you look up at the

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Speaker 1: sky and you see a tiny pinpoint shining bright in

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Speaker 1: the darkness, that could be us, That could be our sun.

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Speaker 1: Sending them information about the universe in US. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: I think the phrase solar system is sort of underappreciated.

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Speaker 1: It's not just that we have a star and it's

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Speaker 1: at the center of the system. We really are part

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Speaker 1: of our star. In some sense, we are living in

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Speaker 1: the atmosphere of our star. It really does dominate the

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Speaker 1: Solar system in a way I think people don't really understand.

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Speaker 1: It's of the mass of the Solar System is in

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Speaker 1: that star, and it's sending out enormous waves of energy

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Speaker 1: and particles all throughout the Solar system. So you could

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Speaker 1: say we're just sort of like flying high in the

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Speaker 1: very outskirts of the solar atmosphere. You know, we are

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Speaker 1: a tiny little part of the Solar system. It is

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Speaker 1: basically the Sun, the whole Solar system. We're almost like

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Speaker 1: little tiny moons on a giant exploding ball of fire. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: you could say that we live on the Sun. You know,

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Speaker 1: in some sense. The edge of the Sun is not

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Speaker 1: really something that's well defined. You could say the whole

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Speaker 1: Solar system is basically just the Sun, and we are

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Speaker 1: part of it. Yeah. And even though it is the

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Speaker 1: closest start to our system, and it provides light for

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Speaker 1: us and heat and which powers all of life on

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Speaker 1: this planet. There's a lot that we surprisingly don't know

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Speaker 1: about our own son. It is fundamentally important to everything

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Speaker 1: we do. It's the best example of a process that

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Speaker 1: happens all over the universe, and it's really important for

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Speaker 1: the universe looking the way that it does. And yet

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Speaker 1: we still have basic questions about what's going on inside

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Speaker 1: our star, how it all works, and how it's even

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Speaker 1: stable for it to get so hot. Yeah, and it

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Speaker 1: seems like an important question right to understand this giant

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Speaker 1: exploding ball of nuclear powered fusion happening right next to us,

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Speaker 1: you know, like, is gonna keep doing that? Is it

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Speaker 1: going to go out? Is it gonna explode? What's going

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Speaker 1: to happen to it? It It seems like important to find

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Speaker 1: out what's going on there. Yeah, if I lived right

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Speaker 1: next to a fusion reactor, I want to understand pretty

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Speaker 1: well if it was going to blow up or if

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Speaker 1: it was going to fail, or what it was going

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Speaker 1: to do, and why it's it's suddenly so hot. There

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Speaker 1: are lots of practical reasons to understand the Sun. It's

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Speaker 1: also just a great mystery, like it's doing so much cool,

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Speaker 1: amazing important stuff, huge tubes of plasma, superheated, incredibly powerful

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Speaker 1: magnetic fields. It's just a great laboratory for understanding, like

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Speaker 1: what can the universe do? After all? How do all

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Speaker 1: these forces come together in extreme environments to create such

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Speaker 1: a dramatic and beautiful display. Yeah, I'm not sure I

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Speaker 1: would call what the Sun is doing cool. It's more

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Speaker 1: like maybe little. It's sisslingly hot. Yeah, there's a lot

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Speaker 1: we don't know about the Sun, and so today on

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Speaker 1: the podcast, we'll be asking the question what will the

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Speaker 1: Parker Solar Probe teachers? I'm guessing things about the Sun? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: the Parker Solar Probe is a really fun piece of

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Speaker 1: technology that humanity designed, build and launched out to go

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Speaker 1: and explore, to visit up close the Sun and to

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Speaker 1: try to get some answers to some pretty basic questions

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Speaker 1: about how the Sun works. Yeah, it's a pretty cool

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Speaker 1: NASA project, one which I made a comic about last year.

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Speaker 1: I don't know if you know those for Physics magazine.

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Speaker 1: Oh no, awesome, I didn't see that. Yeah. I had

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Speaker 1: to interview a bunch of scientists for it, and I

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Speaker 1: put out a comic of your Google, peachd Comics and

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Speaker 1: Parker Solar Probe. You will find it in case you

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Speaker 1: need like a visual companion to this episode. Awesome. I

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Speaker 1: encouraged everyone to check that out. Jorges cartoons explaining signs

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Speaker 1: are always super well done and the visual is always

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Speaker 1: very helpful. Yeah, it is a pretty your sting and

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Speaker 1: fascinating project over at NASA there and so, as usually,

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Speaker 1: we were wondering how many people had heard about the

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Speaker 1: Parker Solar Probe and what they know about it. So

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Speaker 1: thank you very much to everybody who volunteers for this

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Speaker 1: segment of the podcast. We'd love to hear your voice

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Speaker 1: as well. If you've been listening for a while but

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Speaker 1: never screwed up the courage to write in, please don't

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Speaker 1: be shy reach out to me at questions at Daniel

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Speaker 1: and Jorge dot com. So think about it for a second.

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Speaker 1: Have you heard the Parker Solar Probe. Here's what people

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Speaker 1: have to say. I actually learned some things about the

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Speaker 1: Parker Solar Probe recently, and that that well, study the

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Speaker 1: older atmosphere of the Sun or the outer corona, and

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Speaker 1: to learn why it is hotter actually then the surface

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Speaker 1: of the Sun. I believe the Parker Solar Probe is

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Speaker 1: designed to investigate some of the physics behind the fusion

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Speaker 1: of our Sun and perhaps try to explain why there

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Speaker 1: is a temperature differential whereby the gases that are expelled

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Speaker 1: or the atmosphere of the Sun that is farther away

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Speaker 1: from the surface actually heats up as it leaves the

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Speaker 1: surface of the Sun. So I guess it's going to

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Speaker 1: the Sun, the Parker Solar Probe. So I feel like

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Speaker 1: I could probably tell us about pangnetic field or maybe

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Speaker 1: solar flares or um and stuff like that. I have

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Speaker 1: absolutely no idea speculating. I would imagine that it would

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Speaker 1: be something that would go out into the Solar system

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Speaker 1: in order to collect information on things that we otherwise

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Speaker 1: can't infer, such as particles in space, radiation from this

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Speaker 1: point in space, or perhaps a different perspective that we

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Speaker 1: can't get from Earth. I have no idea what the

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Speaker 1: Parker Solar Probe is. I don't know I would get

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Speaker 1: something to do with like temperature radiation, have no clue,

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Speaker 1: maybe solar flares. Not a lot of name recognition, but

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Speaker 1: I think people are sort of pieced together that it's

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Speaker 1: probing the Sun Yeah, but people seem excited to learn

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Speaker 1: about what the Parker Solar Probe might teach us about

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Speaker 1: the mystery of the source of all energy and life

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Speaker 1: on Earth. Yeah, and so let's dig into it, or

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Speaker 1: I guess, let's go out into the Sun with this idea.

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Speaker 1: First of all, what is the Parker Solar Probe? So,

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Speaker 1: the Parker Solar Probe is a really cool project. It's

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Speaker 1: a spacecraft launched from Earth to go investigate the Sun. Basically,

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Speaker 1: to do a bunch of really close fly bys close

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Speaker 1: sort of by solar standards, and measure a bunch of

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Speaker 1: things about the Sun, to try to get a handle

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Speaker 1: on some long standing mysteries about how the Sun works,

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Speaker 1: what's going on inside it, how it gets so hot,

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Speaker 1: and the solar wind that flies out from it. And

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Speaker 1: so in the end, it's just a satellite that we

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Speaker 1: launched from here. It zooms around Venus a few times

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Speaker 1: and makes a bunch of approaches to the Sun and

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Speaker 1: gathers a bunch of data about what's going on. Well,

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Speaker 1: you can't just call it a satellite. It's more like

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Speaker 1: a spaceship, right, spacecraft, that's right. It's not a satellite

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Speaker 1: in the sense that it's orbiting the Earth, it will

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Speaker 1: be orbiting the Sun, so in that sense, it's a

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Speaker 1: satellite of the Sun. But yeah, spacecraft is definitely cool, ruler,

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Speaker 1: and this one contains a lot of really cool technological

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Speaker 1: advances to let it like survive getting so close to

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Speaker 1: the Sun. It's going to get closer to the Sun

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Speaker 1: than any human object ever has and it's going to

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Speaker 1: have a velocity with respect to the Sun greater than

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Speaker 1: any human object has achieved. Super cool. But this is

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Speaker 1: not the first spacecraft we sent to the Sun, right

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Speaker 1: for the first spacecraft we've used to study the Sun.

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Speaker 1: This is kind of the latest and most awesome and

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Speaker 1: the one that's going to get to the Sun the closest. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: the last spacecraft to go visit the Sun before this

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Speaker 1: was the Helios two in nineteen seventy six. So it's

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Speaker 1: been a few decades since we've visited the Sun. It's

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Speaker 1: been a lot of planning, a lot of technological advancements,

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Speaker 1: a lot of ideas, a lot of arguing at NASA

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Speaker 1: budget meetings. So it's exciting to get to go back

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Speaker 1: to the Sun with new technologies and upgraded instruments and

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Speaker 1: to get closer as you said than ever before. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's a hot mission, and it's a long mission to write.

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Speaker 1: It's didn't just take decades to get it going, but

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Speaker 1: the mission itself office is several years. It was launched

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Speaker 1: in August of two eighteen, and you know, even when

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Speaker 1: it launched, it was already unique for a couple of reasons.

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Speaker 1: One is that it was named after a living person.

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Speaker 1: Eugene Parker, who's a famous theorist about how the Sun works,

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Speaker 1: was alive at the time it was launched, even though

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Speaker 1: he was ninety one, and he was on hand to

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Speaker 1: observe the launch, which is really cool. Also, it contained

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Speaker 1: the names of more than a million people who wanted

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Speaker 1: their name to sort of touch the Sun. NASA let

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Speaker 1: people submit their names and they wrote down more than

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Speaker 1: one point one million submissions, put it on a memory

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Speaker 1: card and slapped it on the outside of the probe,

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Speaker 1: so those people could sort of ride along and go

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Speaker 1: visit the Sun with them. No kidding, for real, They

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Speaker 1: just like duct tape a little flash drive to the outside. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: there was a memory card mounted on the plaque so

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Speaker 1: that all those people could feel like they went to

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Speaker 1: visit the Sun. Pretty cool, but you're right, there's gonna

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Speaker 1: be like twenty four solar orbits in a seven year mission.

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Speaker 1: So it's going to zip around the Sun a bunch

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Speaker 1: of times, and it goes sort of between the Sun

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Speaker 1: and Venus and the Sun and Venus, and some of

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Speaker 1: those visits are closer to the Sun and some of

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Speaker 1: them are further from the Sun. Also, remember that the

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Speaker 1: Sun has a weird cycle of its own. It's about

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Speaker 1: eleven years, so the mission lasts long enough to allow

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Speaker 1: us to sample the Sun several times in different places

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Speaker 1: in its own internal cycle. M what do you mean

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Speaker 1: the Sun has a cycle like it It's it's not moving.

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Speaker 1: I mean it's moving through space, but it's not really

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Speaker 1: were respective the solar system. It's more like has cycles

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Speaker 1: of its temperature and size. Right. Yeah, people have been

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Speaker 1: noticing over the last few hundred years that there's an

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Speaker 1: eleven year cycle of the Sun. Over eleven years, you

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Speaker 1: see like the number of sun spots rise and then fall.

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Speaker 1: And people have been recording this four hundreds of years.

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Speaker 1: It's something we've known about it for quite a while.

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Speaker 1: And so the number of like solar flares and corona

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Speaker 1: loops increase and then fall, and actually they think that

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Speaker 1: this cycle has been pretty stable for like hundreds of

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Speaker 1: millions of years. They see evidence of this going back

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Speaker 1: to like the impact on ancient tree rings that have

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Speaker 1: they dung up, like fossilized tree rings from hundreds of

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Speaker 1: millions of years ago show these same kind of cycles.

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Speaker 1: Are you saying the trees are the original scientists, solar

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Speaker 1: scientists of Earth. It's incredible how sensitive life on Earth

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Speaker 1: is to like the mood of the Sun. As the

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Speaker 1: Sun gets hotter, it changes the weather on Earth in

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Speaker 1: a way that we can measure hundreds of millions of

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Speaker 1: years later because of the impact on the trees. And

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Speaker 1: it's not just the Sun's weather. The Sun's magnetic field

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Speaker 1: also flips every eleven years. Remember, the Earth's magnetic field

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Speaker 1: also flips, but it's very irregular. Sometimes it flips every

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Speaker 1: fifty thousand years, sometimes every million years. The Sun's magnetic

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Speaker 1: field flips every eleven years. So that's all part of

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Speaker 1: the solar cycle that people want to understand. And so

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Speaker 1: the mission is like seven years long to try to

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Speaker 1: gather data from different parts of that solar cycle. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: super interesting. Now for the probe. One thing that I

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Speaker 1: found interesting when I talked to scientists about this was

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Speaker 1: that it's actually really hard to get close to the Sun.

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Speaker 1: Like you would have thought that sending something to design,

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Speaker 1: you just kind of put it in space and then

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Speaker 1: the gravity makes it fall towards the Sun. But actually

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Speaker 1: you need a lot of energy to slow down your

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Speaker 1: space graph in order to get close to the Sun. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: as you fall towards the inner Solar System, you speed

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Speaker 1: up because you're trading gravitational potential energy for kinetic energy,

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Speaker 1: and so you likely to sort of like whizz around

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Speaker 1: the back of the Sun. That's true because you have

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Speaker 1: angular momentum and it doesn't go away, right, and so

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Speaker 1: you need to use some energy to basically lose angular

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Speaker 1: momentum if you want to actually fall into the Sun.

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Speaker 1: And that's why it goes around Venus, right. It kind

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Speaker 1: of uses Venus's gravity to slow itself down exactly, uses

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Speaker 1: Venus as like a gravity assist and it's gonna do

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Speaker 1: like five different flybys of Venus to try to shed

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Speaker 1: some of that energy so we can get closer to

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Speaker 1: the Sun. There were previous designs for this mission back

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Speaker 1: in earlier iterations, when it was going to use Jupiter

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Speaker 1: as a gravity assiste. And also have like a bunch

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Speaker 1: of nuclear power on board to try to help it

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Speaker 1: get even closer. So previous designs, we're going to get

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Speaker 1: even closer to the Sun than the actual spacecraft that

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Speaker 1: they launched, but it wasn't going to be near the

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Speaker 1: Sun as long. It was gonna be like a very

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Speaker 1: fast close fly by. So they opted for this approach,

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Speaker 1: which is cheaper, didn't require nuclear power, and give them

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Speaker 1: a longer visit to the Sun, even though it's a

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Speaker 1: little bit further than the original design. Yeah, and so

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Speaker 1: it's on this kind of elliptical orbit where it's kind

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Speaker 1: of swinging between Venus and the Sun. You can imagine

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Speaker 1: like in the ellips Like one end of the ellipse

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Speaker 1: is really close to the Sun, and that's the fly

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Speaker 1: by they do close to the Sun to take data

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Speaker 1: from the Sun exactly. So it's going around. Remember this

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Speaker 1: is like a multi year mission. It's gonna be like

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Speaker 1: twenty four solar orbits. As of October two, it's done

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Speaker 1: thirteen of those so far, and so it's like more

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Speaker 1: than halfway through its life, but there's a lot more

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Speaker 1: coming and we're all looking forward to it getting closer

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Speaker 1: to the Sun. It hasn't yet reached its closest approach,

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Speaker 1: and also it's sampling the solar maximum, which is going

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Speaker 1: to happen in around five that's when the Sun is

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Speaker 1: like at its peak of solar activity. Mm. Yeah, because

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Speaker 1: every time it goes near the Sun, it gets a

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Speaker 1: little bit closer each time, right, Like the orbits are

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Speaker 1: getting smaller and smaller. Yeah, if you look at a

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Speaker 1: map of the orbits, you see it's sort of cork

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Speaker 1: screwing around in this elliptical path, as you say, between

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Speaker 1: the Sun and Venus, so sort of like zooming in

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Speaker 1: on the Sun. Yeah, it's pretty cool that we can

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Speaker 1: like navigate a spacecraft around the Solar System like that,

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Speaker 1: like swinging between the Sun and then on the planet. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: It requires really precise knowledge of where everything is in

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Speaker 1: the Solar System and also a really detailed understanding of gravity.

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Speaker 1: You know, these are also really exquisite tests of our

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Speaker 1: understanding of how gravity works, because you're talking about throwing

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Speaker 1: a rock and basically predicting where it's going to be

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Speaker 1: in ten years right as everything is flying around the

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Speaker 1: Solar System. So it's incredible precision and really awesome sort

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Speaker 1: of control over the physics of the Solar system and gravity. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: you don't want to fall short on that knowledge of

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Speaker 1: gravity when you're sending something close to the Sun. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and so this thing is going to get closer than

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Speaker 1: anything has ever gotten to the Sun before by actor

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Speaker 1: of seven though when you say the number doesn't actually

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Speaker 1: sound that impressive. It's going to get within four million

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Speaker 1: miles of the Sun. It's like just under five of

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Speaker 1: one au the distance from the Sun to the Earth.

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Speaker 1: But that is seven times closer than any previous mission,

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Speaker 1: and it's going to be within ten times the radius

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Speaker 1: of the Sun. Yeah, it sounds like a lot, but

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Speaker 1: it's actually super different close to the Sun and super

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Speaker 1: dangerous and in fact, people I think one of the

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Speaker 1: ways they described is that it's actually gonna touch the

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Speaker 1: Sun in a way, and we'll talk about that later

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Speaker 1: about what that means. Yeah, it's cool to think about

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Speaker 1: touching the Sun. That we can of course argue about

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Speaker 1: what it means to touch it, because like where is

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Speaker 1: the edge of the Sun In some definitions, we're already

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Speaker 1: in the Sun. And it's definitely fascinating to get nearer

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Speaker 1: to the Sun and to study up close what's going

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Speaker 1: on with its magnetic fields and its corona and the

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Speaker 1: solar wind and maybe even understanding what's going on inside

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Speaker 1: it to generate all these cycles. Yeah, and as the

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Speaker 1: sent this probe to the Sun to learn about its mysteries,

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Speaker 1: there are still a lot of things we don't know

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Speaker 1: about the Sun, and so we'll get into those. But

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Speaker 1: first let's take a quick break. All Right, it's the

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Speaker 1: sunny day here in southern California, and we're talking about

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Speaker 1: the Sun and the probe that NASA has sent to

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Speaker 1: study it, the Parker Solar Probe, launched in August, and

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Speaker 1: it's been making closer and closer passes to the Sun,

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Speaker 1: getting us closer to what's going on there in the

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Speaker 1: inside of the Sun and in its atmosphere, to learn

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Speaker 1: about some of the deep mysteries we still have about

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Speaker 1: how it works and what's going on inside there and

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Speaker 1: outside of it. Yeah, you think that after studying the

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Speaker 1: Sun for hundreds or thousands of years, that we might

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Speaker 1: understand better this fusion engine at the heart of our

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Speaker 1: solar system, the thing that's basically making all life on

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Speaker 1: Earth possible. And while we do have some understand of

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Speaker 1: how stars work in general, there are a lot of

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Speaker 1: big mysteries remaining about basic facts about the sun. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: like why don't my kids like to put on sun block?

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Speaker 1: It's a huge mystery to me. The fight to the death.

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Speaker 1: Maybe you should move somewhere less sunny, Maybe you should

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Speaker 1: get them into the habit of wearing hats. Perhaps, But

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Speaker 1: the Sun does have a lot of interesting and pretty

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Speaker 1: deep mysteries about it that we still don't know, and

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Speaker 1: so let's dig into those, Daniel, what are some of

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Speaker 1: the unknowns about the Sun or the sun knowns? One

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Speaker 1: of my favorite mysteries about the Sun is just why

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Speaker 1: the outside of it is so hot. You know, the

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Speaker 1: Sun is of course very very hot. It's thousands of

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Speaker 1: degrees at its surface, and that's where the light that

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Speaker 1: you see is generated. Remember we talked on the podcast

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Speaker 1: several times about the connection between temperature and wavelength. Everything

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Speaker 1: in the universe radiates light, and the light that it

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Speaker 1: radiates depends on its temperature. And the Sun is several

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Speaker 1: thousand degrees kelvin and at that temperature you tend to

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Speaker 1: radiate in the visible spectrum. And it's no coincidence, of course,

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Speaker 1: that the Sun tends to give off light in the

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Speaker 1: visible spectrum. Our eyes evolved in this environment in order

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Speaker 1: to see the light typically given off by the Sun.

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Speaker 1: And so the sun itself is several thousand degrees kelvin.

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Speaker 1: But around the sun is something called the corona, which

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Speaker 1: is much much hotter than the Sun itself. And that's

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Speaker 1: a really big mystery how that gets so hot and

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Speaker 1: how it stays so hot. Yeah, it's a really weird thing,

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Speaker 1: and it's a little bit hard to wrap your head

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Speaker 1: around because the Sun itself is not one temperature, right, Like,

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Speaker 1: the core of the Sun is super duper, duper duper

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Speaker 1: hot because that's where all the fusion is going on.

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Speaker 1: But as you get closer to the surface, it's sort

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Speaker 1: of cools off, right, Like the surface of the sun

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Speaker 1: is much cooler than the center of the Sun. But

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Speaker 1: then if you keep going out further past the surface,

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Speaker 1: it actually starts to get hotter. Again. It's like having

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Speaker 1: a light bulb where the air around the lightbulb is

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Speaker 1: hotter than the surface of the light bulb itself. Expect

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Speaker 1: the hottest point to be the center. This is the

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Speaker 1: source of the heat where most of the fusion is

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Speaker 1: happening until the star gets much much older, of course,

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Speaker 1: but in a star the to the age of our Sun.

432
00:22:01,640 --> 00:22:04,040
Speaker 1: Mostly you have hydrogen fusion at the core which is

433
00:22:04,119 --> 00:22:06,120
Speaker 1: driving it, and then it cools off, as you say,

434
00:22:06,320 --> 00:22:08,679
Speaker 1: as you get to the outer regions. But then it

435
00:22:08,720 --> 00:22:11,800
Speaker 1: weirdly spikes again. So this part the corona is hotter

436
00:22:11,960 --> 00:22:14,720
Speaker 1: than the actual surface of the Sun itself. It can

437
00:22:14,760 --> 00:22:18,080
Speaker 1: be like hundreds of times hotter. The corona is like

438
00:22:18,320 --> 00:22:21,560
Speaker 1: millions of degrees kelvin. Yeah, it's super weird. It's like

439
00:22:21,600 --> 00:22:24,280
Speaker 1: you said, it's like you can imagine the air around

440
00:22:24,680 --> 00:22:27,600
Speaker 1: a light bulb hotter than the actual surface of the

441
00:22:27,680 --> 00:22:30,560
Speaker 1: light bulb. Like, what's going on there? How is that possible?

442
00:22:30,760 --> 00:22:33,040
Speaker 1: It's a big mystery, and it's been a mystery for

443
00:22:33,119 --> 00:22:35,959
Speaker 1: more than a hundred years. People who have been studying

444
00:22:36,000 --> 00:22:38,639
Speaker 1: the Sun, like in the eighteen hundreds were looking at

445
00:22:38,640 --> 00:22:40,639
Speaker 1: the light that comes from the Sun and they noticed

446
00:22:40,680 --> 00:22:43,000
Speaker 1: something really weird when they looked at the spectrum, Like

447
00:22:43,040 --> 00:22:44,840
Speaker 1: they took the light from the Sun and they asked,

448
00:22:44,880 --> 00:22:47,600
Speaker 1: what is the wavelength of all the photons that we get.

449
00:22:47,800 --> 00:22:49,520
Speaker 1: That's sort of the spectrum, and it peaks in the

450
00:22:49,600 --> 00:22:53,639
Speaker 1: visible range as you expect, But there's also one particular line,

451
00:22:54,040 --> 00:22:57,440
Speaker 1: this green line from the Sun at a very strange

452
00:22:57,440 --> 00:23:00,560
Speaker 1: wavelength that they couldn't explain. The only way to explain

453
00:23:00,600 --> 00:23:02,560
Speaker 1: this line, The only thing that tends to give off

454
00:23:02,640 --> 00:23:06,200
Speaker 1: light at this particular frequency is a weird form of iron,

455
00:23:06,680 --> 00:23:11,159
Speaker 1: iron that's been ionized thirteen times. So iron has like

456
00:23:11,240 --> 00:23:15,840
Speaker 1: twenty six protons and twenty six electrons, and in extremely

457
00:23:15,920 --> 00:23:18,879
Speaker 1: hot situations, it can get so ionized that it loses

458
00:23:19,000 --> 00:23:24,080
Speaker 1: thirteen of its electrons. So this is iron thirteen plus

459
00:23:24,119 --> 00:23:26,800
Speaker 1: and this is capable of making that green line. But

460
00:23:26,880 --> 00:23:30,320
Speaker 1: it only exists in situations that are super duper hot,

461
00:23:30,400 --> 00:23:34,440
Speaker 1: like multimillion degree plasmas. So they spotted this in eighteen

462
00:23:34,520 --> 00:23:37,000
Speaker 1: sixty nine and it was a real puzzler. Yeah, it

463
00:23:37,000 --> 00:23:39,080
Speaker 1: tells us that the corona of the Sun is a

464
00:23:39,119 --> 00:23:41,840
Speaker 1: lot harder than the surface of the Sun. And now,

465
00:23:41,880 --> 00:23:43,600
Speaker 1: to give pe pose some context, I think you maybe

466
00:23:43,600 --> 00:23:47,520
Speaker 1: mentioned that the corona is It's like the Sun is

467
00:23:47,520 --> 00:23:51,560
Speaker 1: about one point four million kilometers. Why, but the corona

468
00:23:52,200 --> 00:23:56,159
Speaker 1: extends eight million kilometers around the Sun, right, It's like

469
00:23:56,200 --> 00:23:58,639
Speaker 1: a much wider circle that they call the corona of

470
00:23:58,720 --> 00:24:00,880
Speaker 1: the Sun. That's right. And if you just like had

471
00:24:01,040 --> 00:24:03,320
Speaker 1: a hot blob of gas around the Sun, that was

472
00:24:03,359 --> 00:24:05,679
Speaker 1: hotter than the Sun, than that heat would flow in

473
00:24:05,720 --> 00:24:09,000
Speaker 1: it would cool down. This is not like an equilibrium situation.

474
00:24:09,240 --> 00:24:12,080
Speaker 1: In order for this to persist, you need some source

475
00:24:12,200 --> 00:24:14,520
Speaker 1: of heat. But if the source of heat is the

476
00:24:14,560 --> 00:24:16,879
Speaker 1: Sun itself, you would expect it to be hotter in

477
00:24:16,920 --> 00:24:20,240
Speaker 1: the core. So really nothing about this makes sense. There

478
00:24:20,240 --> 00:24:22,280
Speaker 1: needs to be some way to heat the corona, and

479
00:24:22,280 --> 00:24:26,120
Speaker 1: it doesn't seem like it can come from the inside, right,

480
00:24:26,480 --> 00:24:29,320
Speaker 1: And so it's a very strange situation. Somehow heat seems

481
00:24:29,320 --> 00:24:32,880
Speaker 1: to be flowing out, violating the second law of thermodynamics,

482
00:24:32,920 --> 00:24:35,080
Speaker 1: from something cooler, which is the surface of the Sun,

483
00:24:35,320 --> 00:24:38,240
Speaker 1: to the corona, which is hotter. Right. He doesn't usually

484
00:24:38,240 --> 00:24:41,760
Speaker 1: flow from a cooler surface to a hotter surface, right. Well,

485
00:24:41,800 --> 00:24:43,800
Speaker 1: there's some subtleties. I think then maybe we need to

486
00:24:43,840 --> 00:24:46,679
Speaker 1: go over like, for example, you're talking about temperature, not

487
00:24:46,800 --> 00:24:50,080
Speaker 1: overall energy, Like the corona is hotter than the surface

488
00:24:50,080 --> 00:24:52,600
Speaker 1: of the Sun, but it's a lot sparser. So this

489
00:24:52,680 --> 00:24:54,760
Speaker 1: is one of those situations where it's like it's not

490
00:24:54,840 --> 00:24:56,879
Speaker 1: like there's more energy outside of the Sun, it's just

491
00:24:56,920 --> 00:25:00,080
Speaker 1: that the particles that are there are moving fast for

492
00:25:00,200 --> 00:25:02,920
Speaker 1: than the particles at the surface of the Sun. Right,

493
00:25:03,080 --> 00:25:05,959
Speaker 1: that's exactly right. It's much less dense than the surface

494
00:25:06,000 --> 00:25:08,520
Speaker 1: of the Sun, but the temperatures are higher. In the

495
00:25:08,560 --> 00:25:11,560
Speaker 1: same way that you can have very high temperature plasmas

496
00:25:11,600 --> 00:25:15,000
Speaker 1: between galaxies, places where if we dropped you without a

497
00:25:15,000 --> 00:25:18,200
Speaker 1: space who you would instantly freeze. Though technically you're in

498
00:25:18,240 --> 00:25:21,280
Speaker 1: a very high temperature plasma. It's just very dilute. So

499
00:25:21,320 --> 00:25:24,320
Speaker 1: there are fast moving particles, just not very many of them.

500
00:25:24,960 --> 00:25:26,639
Speaker 1: So I think the same thing is true here. The

501
00:25:26,680 --> 00:25:29,040
Speaker 1: corona is definitely hotter than the surface of the Sun.

502
00:25:29,280 --> 00:25:32,600
Speaker 1: They're faster moving particles, but they're not as many of them,

503
00:25:32,600 --> 00:25:35,240
Speaker 1: so there is less energy. Yeah, but it's still kind

504
00:25:35,240 --> 00:25:37,400
Speaker 1: of I guess the mystery is like, why are these

505
00:25:37,440 --> 00:25:41,520
Speaker 1: particles around the Sun moving faster than the particles just

506
00:25:41,760 --> 00:25:44,680
Speaker 1: coming off of the Sun, Right, that's kind of the mystery. Yeah,

507
00:25:44,720 --> 00:25:47,320
Speaker 1: exactly where did they get this energy? Because by a

508
00:25:47,320 --> 00:25:50,560
Speaker 1: standard heat diffusion process, that shouldn't happen. You shouldn't get

509
00:25:50,600 --> 00:25:54,320
Speaker 1: this weird spike where things suddenly get hotter further from

510
00:25:54,359 --> 00:25:56,600
Speaker 1: the source of the heat. Now, could it just be

511
00:25:56,640 --> 00:25:58,879
Speaker 1: like a situation where it's just the gas around the

512
00:25:58,880 --> 00:26:02,600
Speaker 1: Sun is absorbing the heat from the Sun and getting

513
00:26:02,600 --> 00:26:05,000
Speaker 1: that heat building up, you know, like kind of like

514
00:26:05,040 --> 00:26:07,960
Speaker 1: if I put a black blanket around a light bulb,

515
00:26:08,000 --> 00:26:10,400
Speaker 1: but it's gonna get hot. It is gonna get hot,

516
00:26:10,400 --> 00:26:13,160
Speaker 1: but it's not going to get hotter than the light bulb. Right,

517
00:26:13,400 --> 00:26:16,040
Speaker 1: That's the weird thing that's happening here. The air is

518
00:26:16,080 --> 00:26:18,520
Speaker 1: already a blanket around the light bulb, and it doesn't

519
00:26:18,560 --> 00:26:21,520
Speaker 1: get hotter than the light bulb. The heat diffusion equations

520
00:26:21,560 --> 00:26:24,040
Speaker 1: tell you that the heat flows from the higher temperature

521
00:26:24,080 --> 00:26:26,560
Speaker 1: to the lower temperature. So you need something else to

522
00:26:26,600 --> 00:26:29,520
Speaker 1: explain this. You need some way to like pump energy

523
00:26:29,600 --> 00:26:32,640
Speaker 1: out from the Sun, some other kind of process, not

524
00:26:32,800 --> 00:26:35,959
Speaker 1: just diffusion of energy, all right, So that's a huge mystery.

525
00:26:36,200 --> 00:26:39,480
Speaker 1: There are also other mysteries about the solar wind. Yeah,

526
00:26:39,520 --> 00:26:41,679
Speaker 1: this is sort of connected in the sense that there

527
00:26:41,720 --> 00:26:45,080
Speaker 1: are mysterious high speed particles. The solar wind is something

528
00:26:45,080 --> 00:26:47,920
Speaker 1: that actually is kind of well named because when you

529
00:26:47,960 --> 00:26:49,720
Speaker 1: think about a wind on Earth, you're thinking about like

530
00:26:49,800 --> 00:26:53,159
Speaker 1: high speed particles pushing on you, bouncing off you, transferring

531
00:26:53,160 --> 00:26:55,959
Speaker 1: their momentum. Well, the solar wind is sort of similar.

532
00:26:56,000 --> 00:26:58,800
Speaker 1: The Sun doesn't just put out photons, it also puts

533
00:26:58,800 --> 00:27:02,880
Speaker 1: out particles, protons, electrons, all these things moving at very

534
00:27:03,000 --> 00:27:07,000
Speaker 1: very high speeds, like hundreds of kilometers per second. So

535
00:27:07,040 --> 00:27:08,760
Speaker 1: this is what we call the solar wind, and it

536
00:27:08,800 --> 00:27:11,080
Speaker 1: flies out through the whole solar system. Right, you get

537
00:27:11,080 --> 00:27:12,959
Speaker 1: the solar wind even out here on Earth, and it's

538
00:27:13,000 --> 00:27:15,320
Speaker 1: far out of Jupiter and Neptune. It's like it's not

539
00:27:15,400 --> 00:27:19,359
Speaker 1: just light, it's actual like stuff flying from the Sun. Right. Yeah,

540
00:27:19,359 --> 00:27:22,040
Speaker 1: the Sun is sort of throwing itself at us. This

541
00:27:22,080 --> 00:27:23,919
Speaker 1: is one reason people say that we're sort of in

542
00:27:24,000 --> 00:27:26,800
Speaker 1: the atmosphere of the Sun, because we are in this

543
00:27:27,000 --> 00:27:30,159
Speaker 1: envelope of gas that the Sun is basically produced and

544
00:27:30,200 --> 00:27:32,720
Speaker 1: it's sitting in the middle of Yeah, so then what's

545
00:27:32,720 --> 00:27:35,200
Speaker 1: the mystery about the solar wind. The mystery is how

546
00:27:35,200 --> 00:27:38,439
Speaker 1: the solar wind gets so fast, Like a four hundred

547
00:27:38,520 --> 00:27:42,840
Speaker 1: kilometers per second is very very high speed for these particles.

548
00:27:43,119 --> 00:27:45,159
Speaker 1: If you build a model of the Sun and just

549
00:27:45,200 --> 00:27:48,120
Speaker 1: think about like particles at the edge of the Sun

550
00:27:48,280 --> 00:27:51,200
Speaker 1: boiling off based on the temperature of the Sun, then

551
00:27:51,240 --> 00:27:54,480
Speaker 1: you don't get particles this high speed. Like the Earth

552
00:27:54,480 --> 00:27:58,000
Speaker 1: has an atmosphere, right, and it's losing its atmosphere because

553
00:27:58,040 --> 00:27:59,960
Speaker 1: things at the very top of the atmosphere are moving

554
00:28:00,040 --> 00:28:02,080
Speaker 1: at high speeds and gravity is lower, and they just

555
00:28:02,119 --> 00:28:05,000
Speaker 1: sort of like fly off they reach escape velocity. So

556
00:28:05,040 --> 00:28:07,720
Speaker 1: the Earth is boiling off hydrogen the same way the

557
00:28:07,760 --> 00:28:11,159
Speaker 1: Sun is boiling off particles of itself. But if you

558
00:28:11,200 --> 00:28:14,280
Speaker 1: do the calculations and predict how fast those particles should

559
00:28:14,280 --> 00:28:17,119
Speaker 1: boil off, you get like a hundred and fifty kilometers

560
00:28:17,160 --> 00:28:20,080
Speaker 1: per second, But what we see are things like four

561
00:28:20,240 --> 00:28:24,400
Speaker 1: hundred kilometers per second. So there's some mechanism we don't understand.

562
00:28:24,400 --> 00:28:28,080
Speaker 1: It's like accelerating these particles over a really short distance

563
00:28:28,400 --> 00:28:30,560
Speaker 1: just from like the surface of the Sun boom out

564
00:28:30,560 --> 00:28:32,800
Speaker 1: through the corona and out into the rest of the

565
00:28:32,800 --> 00:28:36,120
Speaker 1: Solar system. You're saying the solar wind is faster than

566
00:28:36,160 --> 00:28:38,959
Speaker 1: what you would expect. Now, is that related to also

567
00:28:39,120 --> 00:28:42,479
Speaker 1: why the corona is harder, Because the corona beaming harder

568
00:28:42,520 --> 00:28:44,680
Speaker 1: also means that the particles there are moving faster than

569
00:28:44,720 --> 00:28:47,200
Speaker 1: what we expect. Yes, we think that these might all

570
00:28:47,240 --> 00:28:50,560
Speaker 1: be connected mysteries, and the answer to them might lie

571
00:28:50,760 --> 00:28:54,080
Speaker 1: somehow in the magnetic fields, because Sun isn't just a

572
00:28:54,160 --> 00:28:56,560
Speaker 1: hot ball of gas the way the Earth is has

573
00:28:56,760 --> 00:29:00,440
Speaker 1: very very powerful magnetic fields that are driving is happening

574
00:29:00,480 --> 00:29:03,120
Speaker 1: inside of it, and also that are driven by what's

575
00:29:03,160 --> 00:29:05,560
Speaker 1: happening inside of it. And these mathetic fields contain a

576
00:29:05,640 --> 00:29:08,520
Speaker 1: lot of energy. And so if essentially you're getting little

577
00:29:08,520 --> 00:29:11,520
Speaker 1: pumps or these magnetic fields are breaking, then those are

578
00:29:11,720 --> 00:29:14,840
Speaker 1: various theories we have about how these particles might get

579
00:29:14,840 --> 00:29:18,200
Speaker 1: accelerated really fast. And it also might explain how the

580
00:29:18,240 --> 00:29:22,120
Speaker 1: corona is getting heated so much cool Now, you mentioned

581
00:29:22,120 --> 00:29:25,040
Speaker 1: solar cycles before the cycles that the Sun goes through.

582
00:29:25,480 --> 00:29:27,680
Speaker 1: There are some mysteries about that too. Yeah. I think

583
00:29:27,720 --> 00:29:30,400
Speaker 1: this is one of the most incredible mysteries in the

584
00:29:30,440 --> 00:29:34,160
Speaker 1: solar system, which is that the Sun's magnetic fields flips. Right,

585
00:29:34,360 --> 00:29:36,360
Speaker 1: I mean, it blew my mind when I learned that

586
00:29:36,400 --> 00:29:39,200
Speaker 1: the Earth's magnetic fields flips. First of all, that it

587
00:29:39,240 --> 00:29:41,520
Speaker 1: isn't just static. It isn't just like point the same direction,

588
00:29:41,640 --> 00:29:44,680
Speaker 1: like wanders around a little bit, but that every fifty

589
00:29:44,720 --> 00:29:48,760
Speaker 1: thousand years or million years, it changes direction. North becomes south,

590
00:29:48,880 --> 00:29:51,320
Speaker 1: south becomes north. If that's not weird enough for you,

591
00:29:51,520 --> 00:29:54,320
Speaker 1: the Sun does that also, but it doesn't like clockwork.

592
00:29:54,560 --> 00:29:57,960
Speaker 1: Every eleven years it flips. I can't overstate how much

593
00:29:58,080 --> 00:30:01,200
Speaker 1: energy is involved here because the song one is enormous

594
00:30:01,520 --> 00:30:05,000
Speaker 1: and whatever is causing its magnetic fields are very very powerful.

595
00:30:05,120 --> 00:30:08,360
Speaker 1: For that entire thing to flip over, it's like turning

596
00:30:08,440 --> 00:30:11,920
Speaker 1: a football stadium upside down, right, and it does it

597
00:30:12,040 --> 00:30:15,640
Speaker 1: every eleven years. Yeah, it's pretty amazing. And so you're saying,

598
00:30:15,640 --> 00:30:18,480
Speaker 1: we don't quite know why they flip, or we don't

599
00:30:18,480 --> 00:30:21,560
Speaker 1: know what's causing it to flip every eleven years. Both,

600
00:30:21,800 --> 00:30:24,120
Speaker 1: we don't even know why it flips. We don't know

601
00:30:24,160 --> 00:30:27,080
Speaker 1: why the Earth's magnetic field flips either. But we definitely

602
00:30:27,120 --> 00:30:29,760
Speaker 1: don't know why the Sun's magnetic field flips, and we

603
00:30:29,800 --> 00:30:32,320
Speaker 1: don't know why it's so regular. We have a bunch

604
00:30:32,320 --> 00:30:34,840
Speaker 1: of different theories for why the Sun's magnetic field flips,

605
00:30:34,840 --> 00:30:37,320
Speaker 1: some of which are pretty awesome and hilarious. Is it

606
00:30:37,360 --> 00:30:39,560
Speaker 1: like an eleven year old kid at the switch, just

607
00:30:39,600 --> 00:30:43,840
Speaker 1: going click click click click, click click plick. I don't

608
00:30:43,880 --> 00:30:46,320
Speaker 1: think eleven year old kids are that regular over a

609
00:30:46,360 --> 00:30:50,600
Speaker 1: seven hundred million year timeline. It's amazing. The first thing

610
00:30:50,640 --> 00:30:52,800
Speaker 1: to understand is how you get a magnetic field anyway.

611
00:30:52,840 --> 00:30:55,400
Speaker 1: For the Earth, we think it comes from like motion

612
00:30:55,440 --> 00:30:59,240
Speaker 1: of fluid metals inside the Earth. Right, Essentially, you're having

613
00:30:59,240 --> 00:31:02,560
Speaker 1: the flow of charge particles creates a magnetic field that

614
00:31:02,640 --> 00:31:05,600
Speaker 1: pushes the charged particles. You get more flow, which gives

615
00:31:05,600 --> 00:31:08,160
Speaker 1: you more magnetic field. It's called the dynamo. And we

616
00:31:08,240 --> 00:31:10,800
Speaker 1: have a whole podcast episode about where the Earth's magnetic

617
00:31:10,840 --> 00:31:13,680
Speaker 1: field comes from. It might be that the Sun's magnetic

618
00:31:13,720 --> 00:31:17,280
Speaker 1: field also comes from something similar. But these dynamos, these

619
00:31:17,320 --> 00:31:20,600
Speaker 1: flows of plasma within the Sun could be affected by

620
00:31:20,640 --> 00:31:24,160
Speaker 1: other things. Like for example, it could be that gravity

621
00:31:24,280 --> 00:31:27,120
Speaker 1: from the other planets like Jupiter and Saturn and even

622
00:31:27,160 --> 00:31:30,240
Speaker 1: the Earth are tugging on these things, and as they

623
00:31:30,280 --> 00:31:33,600
Speaker 1: move around the Sun, their collective gravity could like create

624
00:31:33,640 --> 00:31:36,640
Speaker 1: an instability which flips the whole thing over. Yeah, it's

625
00:31:36,640 --> 00:31:39,560
Speaker 1: like a giant generator basically inside of the Sun and

626
00:31:39,680 --> 00:31:42,600
Speaker 1: the Earth where you have like a all these kind

627
00:31:42,600 --> 00:31:45,880
Speaker 1: of like magnetic materials kind of swirling around and creating things.

628
00:31:45,920 --> 00:31:47,920
Speaker 1: And so I guess if the overall flow changes and

629
00:31:48,000 --> 00:31:51,600
Speaker 1: the overall magnetic field changes to Another possibility is that

630
00:31:51,640 --> 00:31:55,760
Speaker 1: it could be due to differential rotation. Like the Sun rotates,

631
00:31:55,760 --> 00:31:58,520
Speaker 1: but it doesn't rotate the same speed all over. It's

632
00:31:58,520 --> 00:32:01,240
Speaker 1: not a firm object the way the Earth is, right,

633
00:32:01,360 --> 00:32:03,640
Speaker 1: and so for example, at the equator, it takes about

634
00:32:03,680 --> 00:32:05,800
Speaker 1: thirty five days for the Sun to rotate, and it's

635
00:32:05,840 --> 00:32:08,960
Speaker 1: twenty five days to rotate closer to the polls, And

636
00:32:09,000 --> 00:32:12,000
Speaker 1: so the magnetic field lines might be getting like twisted

637
00:32:12,080 --> 00:32:15,000
Speaker 1: and pinched, and it might take like eleven years for

638
00:32:15,120 --> 00:32:17,160
Speaker 1: enough tension to build up for everything to sort of

639
00:32:17,160 --> 00:32:22,320
Speaker 1: like snap and reassemble upside down. That's another possibility. And

640
00:32:22,400 --> 00:32:25,440
Speaker 1: there's a third possibility for what might be explaining the

641
00:32:25,480 --> 00:32:29,120
Speaker 1: Sun's weird magnetic field, which is that the plasma currents

642
00:32:29,240 --> 00:32:32,520
Speaker 1: inside the Sun that are generating these magnetic fields might

643
00:32:32,520 --> 00:32:35,560
Speaker 1: be moving sort of like in a huge donut of plasma.

644
00:32:35,760 --> 00:32:38,240
Speaker 1: Like imagine not just a donut, but a donut now

645
00:32:38,280 --> 00:32:40,320
Speaker 1: with layers in it. Like what do they call that

646
00:32:40,320 --> 00:32:43,200
Speaker 1: when you have a croissant and a donut together, a chronut, right,

647
00:32:43,320 --> 00:32:45,600
Speaker 1: So imagine a donut with all these layers in it.

648
00:32:45,680 --> 00:32:48,560
Speaker 1: And every eleven years, instead of these plasma currents going

649
00:32:48,600 --> 00:32:51,520
Speaker 1: sort of around the outside of the donut, they flip.

650
00:32:51,760 --> 00:32:54,040
Speaker 1: So now they're going like around the short side of

651
00:32:54,040 --> 00:32:56,600
Speaker 1: the donut. Briefly before it's flipping around and going the

652
00:32:56,640 --> 00:32:59,840
Speaker 1: other direction. So we have like lots of very different

653
00:33:00,040 --> 00:33:03,560
Speaker 1: weird ideas about what's going on inside the Sun, and

654
00:33:03,640 --> 00:33:05,800
Speaker 1: the problem is we just haven't gotten close enough to

655
00:33:05,800 --> 00:33:09,200
Speaker 1: make the measurements we need to understand what's going on. Yeah,

656
00:33:09,280 --> 00:33:12,160
Speaker 1: because it is pretty hard to get close to the Sun,

657
00:33:12,240 --> 00:33:16,080
Speaker 1: as I think Icarus and his father learned, it's hard

658
00:33:16,120 --> 00:33:18,760
Speaker 1: to touch the Sun, and obviously also a little bit

659
00:33:18,840 --> 00:33:21,280
Speaker 1: dangerous because the Sun is so hot and putting out

660
00:33:21,280 --> 00:33:23,760
Speaker 1: so much radiation and light and heat. And so let's

661
00:33:23,800 --> 00:33:26,320
Speaker 1: get into what it takes to build the spacecraft to

662
00:33:26,360 --> 00:33:28,440
Speaker 1: get that close to the Sun to solve some of

663
00:33:28,440 --> 00:33:44,520
Speaker 1: these mysteries. But first let's take another quick break. All right.

664
00:33:44,560 --> 00:33:48,240
Speaker 1: We're talking about the Parker Solar Probe, which is the

665
00:33:48,360 --> 00:33:51,959
Speaker 1: fastest or it's going to be the fastest moving spacecraft

666
00:33:51,960 --> 00:33:54,360
Speaker 1: that humankind has ever built, and it's also going to

667
00:33:54,400 --> 00:33:56,720
Speaker 1: get closer to the Sun than anything we've ever build.

668
00:33:56,880 --> 00:33:59,160
Speaker 1: Some say it made it's sort of in a way

669
00:33:59,280 --> 00:34:02,680
Speaker 1: touches the Sun. That makes me think of that kid

670
00:34:02,720 --> 00:34:04,560
Speaker 1: on a Christmas story who puts his tongue on the

671
00:34:04,640 --> 00:34:06,680
Speaker 1: life post and gets it stuck. Yeah, it does sound

672
00:34:06,720 --> 00:34:10,360
Speaker 1: like a cautionary till the people who try to touch

673
00:34:10,400 --> 00:34:12,480
Speaker 1: the Sun. Yeah, and I love this description of it

674
00:34:12,520 --> 00:34:15,040
Speaker 1: as the fastest thing ever built, and that sounds really

675
00:34:15,080 --> 00:34:17,040
Speaker 1: impressive until you kind of hear the number is going

676
00:34:17,080 --> 00:34:20,400
Speaker 1: to go zero point zero six four of the speed

677
00:34:20,400 --> 00:34:24,280
Speaker 1: of light relative to the Sun, and that's really really fast.

678
00:34:24,480 --> 00:34:29,520
Speaker 1: It's like six thousand kilometers per hour, six hundred and

679
00:34:29,680 --> 00:34:38,399
Speaker 1: ninety kilometers per hour. Thousand kilometers per hour. That is insane, right, because, um,

680
00:34:38,440 --> 00:34:40,560
Speaker 1: as you go down the highway, you're going at like

681
00:34:40,719 --> 00:34:45,120
Speaker 1: a hundred kilometers per hour. Does is six kilometers per hour? Yes,

682
00:34:45,200 --> 00:34:47,279
Speaker 1: it's much much faster than I hope any of our

683
00:34:47,280 --> 00:34:50,839
Speaker 1: listeners are traveling on their commute. But it's also such

684
00:34:50,880 --> 00:34:54,360
Speaker 1: a tiny fraction of the speed of light, just another

685
00:34:54,400 --> 00:34:57,279
Speaker 1: sense for like how vast the universe is and how

686
00:34:57,360 --> 00:35:01,040
Speaker 1: extreme the conditions are out there, and how like quiet

687
00:35:01,120 --> 00:35:03,799
Speaker 1: and cozy things are in our neighborhood. It's still a

688
00:35:03,800 --> 00:35:06,520
Speaker 1: pretty amazing achievement. And it's also a huge achievement to

689
00:35:06,600 --> 00:35:10,120
Speaker 1: send something that close to the Sun because the Sun

690
00:35:10,440 --> 00:35:13,719
Speaker 1: is hot, like it's hot here on Earth, Like if

691
00:35:13,719 --> 00:35:16,319
Speaker 1: you stand in the sun in the desert, maybe you're

692
00:35:16,320 --> 00:35:18,960
Speaker 1: going to get heat through, but we're millions of kilometers

693
00:35:19,000 --> 00:35:21,920
Speaker 1: away from the Sun. Imagine being like super close to

694
00:35:21,960 --> 00:35:23,800
Speaker 1: the Sun, You're just getting so much more of the

695
00:35:23,960 --> 00:35:28,319
Speaker 1: radiation and heat and particles trying to kill you. Right. Yeah,

696
00:35:28,360 --> 00:35:30,839
Speaker 1: it's a very intense environment and, as you say, an

697
00:35:30,880 --> 00:35:34,520
Speaker 1: incredible technological achievement to build a spacecraft that can survive

698
00:35:34,640 --> 00:35:37,279
Speaker 1: these visits. Yeah. Do you know how they did it? Yeah,

699
00:35:37,320 --> 00:35:39,800
Speaker 1: they have a bunch of like really cutting edge thermal

700
00:35:39,920 --> 00:35:45,120
Speaker 1: engineering advances. They have a complex solar shield. Basically, the

701
00:35:45,120 --> 00:35:47,920
Speaker 1: thing is diving towards the Sun, but most of the

702
00:35:47,920 --> 00:35:50,400
Speaker 1: instruments are protected by a shield. So the thing is

703
00:35:50,400 --> 00:35:52,640
Speaker 1: like diving towards the Sun, but it's doing a sort

704
00:35:52,640 --> 00:35:56,200
Speaker 1: of shield first. Behind that shield are a bunch of instruments,

705
00:35:56,360 --> 00:35:59,839
Speaker 1: and the shield itself is very fancy and very technological.

706
00:36:00,480 --> 00:36:04,040
Speaker 1: It's made of two panels of reinforced carbon composite with

707
00:36:04,080 --> 00:36:07,240
Speaker 1: like a carbon core foam, and a lot of really

708
00:36:07,280 --> 00:36:10,720
Speaker 1: complicated engineering and modeling went into like how to bleed

709
00:36:10,800 --> 00:36:13,520
Speaker 1: this energy off, how to make sure that the stuff

710
00:36:13,560 --> 00:36:16,759
Speaker 1: behind the shield doesn't get fried. Yeah. I think if

711
00:36:16,760 --> 00:36:18,959
Speaker 1: you look at a picture of the park or solar probe,

712
00:36:18,960 --> 00:36:20,880
Speaker 1: you'll see that like half of it is basically the

713
00:36:20,880 --> 00:36:23,920
Speaker 1: heat shield. It's almost like you know, like when Captain

714
00:36:23,920 --> 00:36:26,080
Speaker 1: America jumps out of a building and he's you know,

715
00:36:26,600 --> 00:36:28,759
Speaker 1: it's covered behind his shield. That's kind of what this

716
00:36:28,840 --> 00:36:31,000
Speaker 1: probe is doing. It's it's not that it's covered all

717
00:36:31,000 --> 00:36:33,680
Speaker 1: the way around. It just has a one shield in front,

718
00:36:33,840 --> 00:36:36,080
Speaker 1: and so it's always going to be facing the Sun

719
00:36:36,239 --> 00:36:38,920
Speaker 1: with the shield, otherwise it's gonna get fried. Yeah, and

720
00:36:38,920 --> 00:36:41,920
Speaker 1: the shield can withstand temperatures up to like thirteen or

721
00:36:41,960 --> 00:36:45,680
Speaker 1: fourteen hundred celsius, but the instruments have to be kept

722
00:36:45,719 --> 00:36:49,560
Speaker 1: at like thirty celsius otherwise they'll get fried. And you know,

723
00:36:49,600 --> 00:36:52,200
Speaker 1: this is a complicated maneuver. It's not just diving towards

724
00:36:52,200 --> 00:36:54,000
Speaker 1: the Sun and done as you said, it's orbiting the

725
00:36:54,040 --> 00:36:56,760
Speaker 1: Sun a bunch of times, so has to orient itself

726
00:36:56,760 --> 00:36:59,879
Speaker 1: to always keep the shield between the instruments and the Sun.

727
00:37:00,239 --> 00:37:02,719
Speaker 1: So that means like turning right. If these things are

728
00:37:02,719 --> 00:37:05,839
Speaker 1: exposed to the intense radiation near the Sun for like

729
00:37:06,160 --> 00:37:10,239
Speaker 1: tens of seconds, they're fried. So over like a ten

730
00:37:10,400 --> 00:37:14,680
Speaker 1: year mission, you can't have ten seconds of exposure to

731
00:37:14,800 --> 00:37:17,279
Speaker 1: the Sun. So this thing has a lot of computing

732
00:37:17,320 --> 00:37:20,120
Speaker 1: on board to make sure that the shield is always

733
00:37:20,239 --> 00:37:22,959
Speaker 1: in place. They call it one of the most autonomous

734
00:37:23,000 --> 00:37:26,160
Speaker 1: spacecraft ever flown. Because it's so far away that like

735
00:37:26,239 --> 00:37:28,440
Speaker 1: nobody on Earth can drive it in real time. It

736
00:37:28,480 --> 00:37:31,120
Speaker 1: would take too long for the signals to get back

737
00:37:31,120 --> 00:37:33,680
Speaker 1: and forth. So basically has to fly itself. And it

738
00:37:33,719 --> 00:37:36,319
Speaker 1: doesn't just have to fly by itself because it's far away.

739
00:37:36,360 --> 00:37:39,799
Speaker 1: It's because it's at some point it goes behind the sun, right, like,

740
00:37:39,880 --> 00:37:42,439
Speaker 1: at some point it's on the other side of the Sun,

741
00:37:42,640 --> 00:37:44,880
Speaker 1: and there's like no way it can send a signal

742
00:37:44,920 --> 00:37:46,680
Speaker 1: to us or we can send a signal to it,

743
00:37:46,760 --> 00:37:49,960
Speaker 1: so it has to be pretty much autonomous and always

744
00:37:50,160 --> 00:37:52,399
Speaker 1: face the shield towards the Sun. Yeah, that's a really

745
00:37:52,400 --> 00:37:55,360
Speaker 1: good point. We cannot control anything on the other side

746
00:37:55,520 --> 00:37:58,520
Speaker 1: of the Sun. No signals we send could be received there.

747
00:37:58,560 --> 00:38:00,719
Speaker 1: So every time it goes behind the Sun, we just

748
00:38:00,960 --> 00:38:03,240
Speaker 1: sort of sit and wait and hope that it comes

749
00:38:03,280 --> 00:38:06,960
Speaker 1: back around the other side in good condition. Yeah, they

750
00:38:06,960 --> 00:38:09,680
Speaker 1: told me that. Apparently there are three computers on board,

751
00:38:09,880 --> 00:38:12,480
Speaker 1: and the way that the probe makes decisions is that

752
00:38:12,520 --> 00:38:15,880
Speaker 1: the three computers are independent and they vote on what

753
00:38:16,040 --> 00:38:18,480
Speaker 1: the probes should do at any point when it's independent,

754
00:38:18,560 --> 00:38:21,480
Speaker 1: and then they take a vote and whoever whichever decision

755
00:38:21,520 --> 00:38:23,919
Speaker 1: wins gets the most votes. Is what the probe does.

756
00:38:24,680 --> 00:38:27,040
Speaker 1: That's awesome. Are they all running Windows? No? I think

757
00:38:27,080 --> 00:38:29,560
Speaker 1: one of them is like iOS. When of them to

758
00:38:30,840 --> 00:38:34,040
Speaker 1: Linux or unux, just to be safe, you know, would

759
00:38:34,040 --> 00:38:37,560
Speaker 1: download the Windows computer. But it's also interesting because like

760
00:38:37,640 --> 00:38:39,839
Speaker 1: the probe needs to shield itself from the sun when

761
00:38:39,840 --> 00:38:41,839
Speaker 1: it's closed because the sun is so hot. But when

762
00:38:41,840 --> 00:38:44,160
Speaker 1: it's far away from the sun, it meets the Sun's

763
00:38:44,320 --> 00:38:47,520
Speaker 1: energy to power and its batteries. So it has like

764
00:38:47,600 --> 00:38:51,000
Speaker 1: these retractable solar panels that when it's far away from

765
00:38:51,040 --> 00:38:53,160
Speaker 1: the sun, it like puts out these panels, but when

766
00:38:53,160 --> 00:38:55,200
Speaker 1: it's getting closer, it tucks them in, kind of like

767
00:38:55,239 --> 00:38:59,520
Speaker 1: one of those jets that tucks its wings in. Yeah,

768
00:38:59,560 --> 00:39:01,800
Speaker 1: it's like a hawk diving right as it gets to

769
00:39:01,960 --> 00:39:04,960
Speaker 1: very high speeds, it tucks itself in. It's really very awesome,

770
00:39:05,239 --> 00:39:07,520
Speaker 1: and my applause to everybody who worked on this project

771
00:39:07,520 --> 00:39:09,520
Speaker 1: and designed it. And it must be really nail biting

772
00:39:09,800 --> 00:39:12,839
Speaker 1: to see actually out there and flying and implementing the

773
00:39:12,840 --> 00:39:16,640
Speaker 1: programming that you put into it and trusting these autonomous

774
00:39:16,680 --> 00:39:19,480
Speaker 1: systems to make these decisions with your baby. I mean,

775
00:39:19,480 --> 00:39:22,040
Speaker 1: you work on this project for like a career. This is,

776
00:39:22,320 --> 00:39:24,000
Speaker 1: you know, not a one project you work on and

777
00:39:24,000 --> 00:39:26,240
Speaker 1: then you move on to another one the next week.

778
00:39:26,400 --> 00:39:29,520
Speaker 1: This is a decades long project. So these people are

779
00:39:29,600 --> 00:39:32,160
Speaker 1: biting their nails every time it goes around the Sun. Yeah,

780
00:39:32,200 --> 00:39:35,200
Speaker 1: it's a lot of trust to put into or a

781
00:39:35,239 --> 00:39:38,640
Speaker 1: majority vote, but you know, to get answers to the

782
00:39:38,680 --> 00:39:41,480
Speaker 1: physics questions that we want, you really do have to

783
00:39:41,520 --> 00:39:43,879
Speaker 1: get near the Sun. Sometimes you can learn things about

784
00:39:43,880 --> 00:39:46,600
Speaker 1: what's happening really far away just by sampling the photons

785
00:39:46,640 --> 00:39:48,960
Speaker 1: that get here, but sometimes they're scrambled, and that's the

786
00:39:49,000 --> 00:39:51,520
Speaker 1: case here. To understand what's going on in the Sun's corona,

787
00:39:51,560 --> 00:39:54,200
Speaker 1: in the acceleration of the solar wind and the magnetic field,

788
00:39:54,320 --> 00:39:56,319
Speaker 1: you have to get as close as possible to the

789
00:39:56,360 --> 00:39:58,560
Speaker 1: Sun because things tend to get scrambled by the time

790
00:39:58,560 --> 00:40:01,640
Speaker 1: they're already here on Earth. And so part of what

791
00:40:01,680 --> 00:40:04,480
Speaker 1: the probe is doing is getting those measurements really close

792
00:40:04,480 --> 00:40:06,520
Speaker 1: to the Sun, which we know it's really hard, but

793
00:40:06,600 --> 00:40:08,320
Speaker 1: they seem to be doing it. And so the idea

794
00:40:08,360 --> 00:40:11,360
Speaker 1: is to, as you said, to study the electromagnetic field

795
00:40:11,400 --> 00:40:13,200
Speaker 1: to the Sun because maybe that's where a lot of

796
00:40:13,239 --> 00:40:15,960
Speaker 1: these mysteries can be explained. Yeah, they have a bunch

797
00:40:16,000 --> 00:40:19,320
Speaker 1: of instruments on board. One of them measures the electromagnetic fields,

798
00:40:19,320 --> 00:40:21,960
Speaker 1: another one measures the velocity of the particles of the

799
00:40:22,000 --> 00:40:24,560
Speaker 1: solar wind, and there's also a camera they can just

800
00:40:24,600 --> 00:40:27,920
Speaker 1: like take pictures of solar activity. Um. But it's this

801
00:40:27,960 --> 00:40:30,640
Speaker 1: one that like measures the electromagnetic fields that I think

802
00:40:30,760 --> 00:40:33,560
Speaker 1: is really going to provide the clues that help us

803
00:40:33,640 --> 00:40:36,160
Speaker 1: understand and build like a deeper model of what's going

804
00:40:36,200 --> 00:40:39,440
Speaker 1: on inside the Sun, because fundamentally, the Sun is a

805
00:40:39,480 --> 00:40:42,560
Speaker 1: ball of plasma. Remember, a plasma is just a gas

806
00:40:42,600 --> 00:40:46,640
Speaker 1: that's so hot that the electrons are free, they're flying around,

807
00:40:46,920 --> 00:40:50,000
Speaker 1: so everything in the plasma has an electric charge. So

808
00:40:50,040 --> 00:40:52,640
Speaker 1: instead of just being like any other blob of hot gas,

809
00:40:52,800 --> 00:40:56,920
Speaker 1: now affected by electromagnetic fields and it generates electromagnetic fields.

810
00:40:57,080 --> 00:41:00,040
Speaker 1: So it's very chaotic. It's very difficult to understand this

811
00:41:00,440 --> 00:41:02,879
Speaker 1: part of why fusion is so hard to do here

812
00:41:02,920 --> 00:41:06,000
Speaker 1: on Earth, because plasmas are chaotic and very intense, and

813
00:41:06,040 --> 00:41:09,600
Speaker 1: so measuring those electromagnetic fields close up will give us

814
00:41:09,600 --> 00:41:12,160
Speaker 1: a sense for like what's going on inside the Sun.

815
00:41:12,280 --> 00:41:14,640
Speaker 1: How are these things flipping? Are these magnetic tubes like

816
00:41:14,719 --> 00:41:18,080
Speaker 1: reconnecting and snapping to accelerate particles. That really is part

817
00:41:18,120 --> 00:41:20,520
Speaker 1: of the core of the mission of the spacecraft. Yeah, because,

818
00:41:20,560 --> 00:41:23,320
Speaker 1: as you mentioned before, the maybe the sort of two

819
00:41:23,400 --> 00:41:25,919
Speaker 1: big mysteries about the Sun that we don't know right now.

820
00:41:26,040 --> 00:41:29,080
Speaker 1: Why the outside of the Sun, the solar corona is

821
00:41:29,120 --> 00:41:32,240
Speaker 1: hotter than the surface of the Sun. And also what

822
00:41:32,520 --> 00:41:35,520
Speaker 1: is making the solar winds so fast, faster than it

823
00:41:35,560 --> 00:41:37,719
Speaker 1: should be if it was just coming off of the Sun.

824
00:41:37,800 --> 00:41:39,640
Speaker 1: And so it seems like maybe a big explanation is

825
00:41:39,719 --> 00:41:42,560
Speaker 1: what's going on with the magnetic fields outside of the

826
00:41:42,640 --> 00:41:46,840
Speaker 1: Sun right exactly, And it might be connected to another mystery,

827
00:41:47,120 --> 00:41:49,440
Speaker 1: which is the mystery of these solar flares. You know,

828
00:41:49,520 --> 00:41:52,320
Speaker 1: the Sun is bright and hot, but it's not always static,

829
00:41:52,400 --> 00:41:55,200
Speaker 1: right There are suns spots and sometimes it injects a

830
00:41:55,239 --> 00:41:58,080
Speaker 1: lot of energy and even like huge blobs of plasma.

831
00:41:58,239 --> 00:42:01,120
Speaker 1: These things are called coronal massage actions and solar flares,

832
00:42:01,120 --> 00:42:03,520
Speaker 1: and something we want to understand because it affects life

833
00:42:03,560 --> 00:42:06,520
Speaker 1: on Earth, because these particles sometimes even reach Earth and

834
00:42:06,520 --> 00:42:09,360
Speaker 1: can damage our electronics. And they think that these solar

835
00:42:09,400 --> 00:42:13,280
Speaker 1: flares might be caused by disruptions in the magnetic field

836
00:42:13,440 --> 00:42:16,520
Speaker 1: of the Sun. Like when these magnetic tubes get pinched

837
00:42:16,520 --> 00:42:19,279
Speaker 1: off and collapse, it can cause a little eruption. That's

838
00:42:19,280 --> 00:42:21,640
Speaker 1: an idea for what might be explaining these solar flares,

839
00:42:21,840 --> 00:42:25,200
Speaker 1: and a related idea might solve these questions of the

840
00:42:25,239 --> 00:42:27,640
Speaker 1: solar wind and the heat of the corona. As you

841
00:42:27,640 --> 00:42:31,600
Speaker 1: were saying this, this theory of like nanoflares that instead

842
00:42:31,600 --> 00:42:34,359
Speaker 1: of like always having huge, big flares, maybe the Sun

843
00:42:34,480 --> 00:42:38,360
Speaker 1: is constantly having a lot of these little magnetic disruptions

844
00:42:38,400 --> 00:42:41,840
Speaker 1: that caused nanoflares that dump out energy from the surface

845
00:42:41,840 --> 00:42:45,040
Speaker 1: of the Sun to the solar wind and to the corona. Yeah,

846
00:42:45,040 --> 00:42:47,640
Speaker 1: because I think an interesting concept here is that the

847
00:42:47,719 --> 00:42:51,279
Speaker 1: Sun isn't just the gas that's on fire. It's not

848
00:42:51,360 --> 00:42:54,719
Speaker 1: just the circle that's shining bright kind of like part

849
00:42:54,760 --> 00:42:58,160
Speaker 1: of the Sun is also the invisible magnetic fields that

850
00:42:58,640 --> 00:43:01,440
Speaker 1: the Sun is creating, and that it's there are extending

851
00:43:01,520 --> 00:43:04,880
Speaker 1: out past a visible surface, right, because these magnetic fields

852
00:43:04,920 --> 00:43:08,120
Speaker 1: are huge, right, they are there are millions of kilometers

853
00:43:08,280 --> 00:43:12,160
Speaker 1: more wider than the actual visible width of the Sun,

854
00:43:12,400 --> 00:43:16,759
Speaker 1: Like it has invisible fingers. Yeah, and it's sort of

855
00:43:16,800 --> 00:43:19,080
Speaker 1: like a duet, right, or like a dance. There's two

856
00:43:19,120 --> 00:43:23,000
Speaker 1: partners there. The magnetic fields push on the particles and

857
00:43:23,080 --> 00:43:25,160
Speaker 1: change how they behave and where they go and how

858
00:43:25,200 --> 00:43:28,680
Speaker 1: much energy they have. And the particles, because they have charges,

859
00:43:29,000 --> 00:43:33,279
Speaker 1: also generate electric fields. It's this very nonlinear behavior that

860
00:43:33,360 --> 00:43:36,719
Speaker 1: can easily generate runaway effects that can get very very extreme,

861
00:43:37,000 --> 00:43:39,960
Speaker 1: and they power each other, like these dynamos inside the

862
00:43:40,000 --> 00:43:43,280
Speaker 1: Sun or inside the Earth that generate our magnetic field.

863
00:43:43,320 --> 00:43:45,200
Speaker 1: And so, as you say, this like one partner in

864
00:43:45,239 --> 00:43:48,120
Speaker 1: that dance that we can't always see directly with our eyes,

865
00:43:48,160 --> 00:43:50,920
Speaker 1: but it plays a really big role in what's happening.

866
00:43:51,239 --> 00:43:54,239
Speaker 1: It controls how all this plasma flows and where the

867
00:43:54,320 --> 00:43:57,439
Speaker 1: energy is deposited. And so instead of just thinking about

868
00:43:57,440 --> 00:43:59,480
Speaker 1: the sun is like a hot ball of gas where

869
00:43:59,520 --> 00:44:03,720
Speaker 1: the energy is diffusing out from the second law of thermodynamics. Instead,

870
00:44:03,760 --> 00:44:06,560
Speaker 1: now we're imagining like all these little magnetic tubes that

871
00:44:06,600 --> 00:44:09,400
Speaker 1: are like leaching energy out from the Sun more intensely,

872
00:44:09,520 --> 00:44:11,560
Speaker 1: and those could be like heating up the particles and

873
00:44:11,600 --> 00:44:14,160
Speaker 1: speeding them away in the solar wind to get them

874
00:44:14,200 --> 00:44:18,239
Speaker 1: really really fast and making the corona hot as well. Yeah,

875
00:44:18,239 --> 00:44:19,880
Speaker 1: because the other thing is that it's kind of like

876
00:44:19,920 --> 00:44:23,600
Speaker 1: a dynamic environment around the Sun, right, like, the Sun

877
00:44:23,719 --> 00:44:26,640
Speaker 1: is churning, things are moving, like you said before, Uh,

878
00:44:26,760 --> 00:44:30,200
Speaker 1: there are flows inside of the Sun of these particles,

879
00:44:30,280 --> 00:44:32,800
Speaker 1: and the stuff in the Sun is changing and flowing

880
00:44:33,040 --> 00:44:36,360
Speaker 1: and churning, and so these magnetic fields outside of the

881
00:44:36,360 --> 00:44:39,800
Speaker 1: Sun are also moving and changing, and sometimes they crash

882
00:44:39,920 --> 00:44:41,960
Speaker 1: into each other. And that's kind of I think one

883
00:44:41,960 --> 00:44:44,800
Speaker 1: of the other explanations for maybe what makes the corona

884
00:44:44,840 --> 00:44:47,840
Speaker 1: so hot is that these magnetic fields are basically crashing

885
00:44:47,840 --> 00:44:50,359
Speaker 1: and exciting the corona more than you would think. Yeah,

886
00:44:50,440 --> 00:44:52,839
Speaker 1: and it's Eugene Parker who sort of came up with

887
00:44:52,880 --> 00:44:56,600
Speaker 1: this idea. Before him, people thought about the Sun's atmosphere

888
00:44:56,680 --> 00:44:58,880
Speaker 1: sort of like static, the way the Earth's is. It's,

889
00:44:58,960 --> 00:45:00,879
Speaker 1: you know, maybe boiling off a little bit at the top,

890
00:45:00,880 --> 00:45:03,680
Speaker 1: but it's basically just floating there, held by gravity. But

891
00:45:03,760 --> 00:45:06,520
Speaker 1: he wrote the first paper suggesting that the Sun's atmosphere

892
00:45:06,520 --> 00:45:09,440
Speaker 1: is could of dynamic and has all these magnetic components

893
00:45:09,800 --> 00:45:13,200
Speaker 1: and generates this really powerful wind to explain these high

894
00:45:13,239 --> 00:45:16,200
Speaker 1: speed particles. And his original paper was like rejected a

895
00:45:16,320 --> 00:45:19,200
Speaker 1: million times, sort of like the way like the Harry

896
00:45:19,239 --> 00:45:22,640
Speaker 1: Potter manuscript was rejected by dozens of people before it

897
00:45:22,719 --> 00:45:24,800
Speaker 1: was published, but he was right, and it was confirmed

898
00:45:24,840 --> 00:45:27,360
Speaker 1: later by like the Mariner mission that measured the solar

899
00:45:27,400 --> 00:45:29,799
Speaker 1: wind to be these really high speed and so, yeah,

900
00:45:29,840 --> 00:45:32,280
Speaker 1: the Sun's atmosphere is much more complex in the Earth's

901
00:45:32,320 --> 00:45:35,600
Speaker 1: atmosphere because it's a big magnetic ball of hot plasma.

902
00:45:35,719 --> 00:45:38,759
Speaker 1: Is lots of crazy things happening. These magnetic tubes are

903
00:45:38,760 --> 00:45:41,520
Speaker 1: breaking and clipping and reversing and smashing into each other.

904
00:45:41,600 --> 00:45:44,360
Speaker 1: It's like magnetic weather. Yeah, it's good that his theory

905
00:45:44,400 --> 00:45:46,680
Speaker 1: finally saw the light of day. But I think also

906
00:45:47,160 --> 00:45:49,520
Speaker 1: that could also maybe explained the solar wind. Right, it

907
00:45:49,560 --> 00:45:54,520
Speaker 1: could be these like thrashing, moving magnetic fields around the

908
00:45:54,560 --> 00:45:58,160
Speaker 1: Sun that are maybe causing or accelerating particles in the

909
00:45:58,200 --> 00:46:01,120
Speaker 1: solar wind. Yeah, these are all mechanism sums for taking

910
00:46:01,200 --> 00:46:04,120
Speaker 1: energy from the inside of the Sun and dumping it

911
00:46:04,160 --> 00:46:07,000
Speaker 1: out into the corona, accelerating those particles into the solar

912
00:46:07,000 --> 00:46:10,240
Speaker 1: wind and heating up the corona. Remember, to solve this mystery,

913
00:46:10,280 --> 00:46:12,960
Speaker 1: we need something other than just the second loftterm agynamics.

914
00:46:13,040 --> 00:46:15,840
Speaker 1: We need some pump that's like pulling energy from the

915
00:46:15,880 --> 00:46:18,799
Speaker 1: Sun and accelerating these particles. And as you say, these

916
00:46:18,840 --> 00:46:22,200
Speaker 1: magnetic fields and they're crazy behavior might just do that.

917
00:46:22,719 --> 00:46:25,600
Speaker 1: And early results from the Parker Solar Probe are suggestive.

918
00:46:25,880 --> 00:46:28,960
Speaker 1: They've made a bunch of measurements of these magnetic switchbacks,

919
00:46:28,960 --> 00:46:32,760
Speaker 1: like sudden reversals in the magnetic field, much more dramatic

920
00:46:33,000 --> 00:46:36,200
Speaker 1: than anything you would expect otherwise. They're like frequent and

921
00:46:36,280 --> 00:46:40,359
Speaker 1: short lived changes in the magnetic field. That's suggesting that

922
00:46:40,400 --> 00:46:43,839
Speaker 1: it's sort of like a chaotic magnetic environment. And these

923
00:46:43,880 --> 00:46:47,120
Speaker 1: magnetic pumps, these nanoflares at the surface of the Sun

924
00:46:47,239 --> 00:46:49,960
Speaker 1: caused by this crazy magnetic behavior could be with heating

925
00:46:50,000 --> 00:46:52,560
Speaker 1: up the corona and accelerating the solar wind. Yeah. I

926
00:46:53,000 --> 00:46:55,560
Speaker 1: think that was the whole point of the Parker Solar Probe,

927
00:46:55,600 --> 00:46:58,239
Speaker 1: is to get in there, in those magnetic fields and

928
00:46:58,320 --> 00:47:00,799
Speaker 1: measure what's going on in there. And that's kind of

929
00:47:00,800 --> 00:47:02,799
Speaker 1: what they mean when they say that probe kind of

930
00:47:02,840 --> 00:47:05,000
Speaker 1: touches the Sun because it's it's sort of in there.

931
00:47:05,040 --> 00:47:07,400
Speaker 1: It actually gets to the point where it's right in

932
00:47:07,480 --> 00:47:10,120
Speaker 1: the middle of those magnetic fields, which in a way

933
00:47:10,200 --> 00:47:12,960
Speaker 1: are kind of the Sun itself, right. I mean, it's

934
00:47:12,960 --> 00:47:14,920
Speaker 1: not touching the visible surface of the Sun, but it

935
00:47:15,040 --> 00:47:18,160
Speaker 1: is touching it's magnetic fingers. Yeah, when you're building a

936
00:47:18,200 --> 00:47:20,040
Speaker 1: model of the Sun, you have to match the data

937
00:47:20,080 --> 00:47:22,520
Speaker 1: you see from the outside, but it's always ambiguity about

938
00:47:22,520 --> 00:47:25,000
Speaker 1: what's going on inside. So which you really want is

939
00:47:25,080 --> 00:47:28,000
Speaker 1: data from the inside, from where all the action is happening,

940
00:47:28,120 --> 00:47:30,320
Speaker 1: right from the inside out. As you say, Parker is

941
00:47:30,360 --> 00:47:32,520
Speaker 1: going to give us this measurement of what's going on

942
00:47:32,640 --> 00:47:34,200
Speaker 1: very very close to the Sun and can help us

943
00:47:34,239 --> 00:47:36,960
Speaker 1: constrain these models, tell us which ideas are wrong and

944
00:47:37,000 --> 00:47:40,439
Speaker 1: which ideas do actually describe what's happening in the Sun.

945
00:47:40,840 --> 00:47:42,840
Speaker 1: So that's pretty exciting in a way. It's sort of

946
00:47:42,880 --> 00:47:44,960
Speaker 1: like the probe is not really touching the Sun. It's

947
00:47:44,960 --> 00:47:46,799
Speaker 1: more like it's getting to the point where the Sun

948
00:47:46,880 --> 00:47:51,759
Speaker 1: touches it. Touched by the Sun. That's going to be

949
00:47:51,880 --> 00:47:53,839
Speaker 1: the name of its memoir when it's done with its trip,

950
00:47:53,920 --> 00:47:55,799
Speaker 1: and hopefully it didn't make it's a heat shield out

951
00:47:55,840 --> 00:47:58,840
Speaker 1: of wax and feathers, because we know that's a bad idea.

952
00:48:00,200 --> 00:48:03,160
Speaker 1: And there's also exciting room for surprises. Right, we have

953
00:48:03,239 --> 00:48:05,879
Speaker 1: these ideas about what might be happening inside the Sun

954
00:48:05,960 --> 00:48:08,680
Speaker 1: and near its edge, but remember that every time we

955
00:48:08,760 --> 00:48:10,960
Speaker 1: send something out into the universe or develop a new

956
00:48:11,040 --> 00:48:13,400
Speaker 1: kind of eyeball. We're surprised by what we learned. The

957
00:48:13,480 --> 00:48:16,720
Speaker 1: universe doesn't just say yes or no to our theories.

958
00:48:16,760 --> 00:48:21,280
Speaker 1: It says yes but or actually, something totally different is happening.

959
00:48:21,719 --> 00:48:24,600
Speaker 1: And so the Parker Solar Probe is going somewhere nobody's

960
00:48:24,640 --> 00:48:27,480
Speaker 1: gone before, and it might discover things that totally surprise us.

961
00:48:28,560 --> 00:48:31,520
Speaker 1: The universe is not big into improv theory. It's not

962
00:48:31,600 --> 00:48:33,480
Speaker 1: a yes and kind of thing. It's a yes, but

963
00:48:35,480 --> 00:48:38,400
Speaker 1: it's a sorry about the theory you've been developing for decades,

964
00:48:38,560 --> 00:48:40,880
Speaker 1: but you were totally wrong. Well that's when we have

965
00:48:40,960 --> 00:48:43,200
Speaker 1: to improvise. I guess all right, Well, the probe is

966
00:48:43,239 --> 00:48:46,080
Speaker 1: out there, it's flying close to the Sun. Uh. There's

967
00:48:46,160 --> 00:48:49,120
Speaker 1: data coming in all the time now and new papers

968
00:48:49,200 --> 00:48:51,080
Speaker 1: coming out of it, and so as it gets even

969
00:48:51,120 --> 00:48:53,640
Speaker 1: closer to the Sun, we'll learn more and more about

970
00:48:53,640 --> 00:48:56,200
Speaker 1: what's going on in there, and so stay tuned for

971
00:48:56,719 --> 00:48:59,440
Speaker 1: more news about the Sun. I'm saying that pro has

972
00:48:59,480 --> 00:49:02,880
Speaker 1: a lot of any days ahead of it, exactly, And

973
00:49:02,920 --> 00:49:05,640
Speaker 1: so thank you to everybody at NASA who developed these

974
00:49:05,640 --> 00:49:08,440
Speaker 1: things and sweated over it and launched it so that

975
00:49:08,480 --> 00:49:11,120
Speaker 1: we could all learn more about what's going on at

976
00:49:11,160 --> 00:49:13,440
Speaker 1: the heart of our solar system. Yeah, and thanks to

977
00:49:13,440 --> 00:49:15,520
Speaker 1: the scientists who talked to me to make my comic

978
00:49:15,600 --> 00:49:19,200
Speaker 1: about the Parker Solar Probe and all of this solar signs. Again,

979
00:49:19,239 --> 00:49:21,719
Speaker 1: if you want a visual companion to this episode, just

980
00:49:21,840 --> 00:49:26,080
Speaker 1: google PhD Comics and Parker Solar Probe. You'll see it

981
00:49:26,120 --> 00:49:28,960
Speaker 1: on Physics Magazines website. All right, well, we hope you

982
00:49:29,080 --> 00:49:31,520
Speaker 1: enjoyed Dad, Go out there and get some sun if

983
00:49:31,520 --> 00:49:33,960
Speaker 1: you can. Thanks for joining us, See you next time.

984
00:49:41,840 --> 00:49:44,680
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain

985
00:49:44,719 --> 00:49:47,560
Speaker 1: the Universe is a production of I Heart Radio. For

986
00:49:47,760 --> 00:49:50,680
Speaker 1: more podcast from My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart

987
00:49:50,760 --> 00:49:54,359
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your

988
00:49:54,400 --> 00:50:05,320
Speaker 1: favorite shows.