It was known that the phenomenon could last for about five minutes – but now researchers have discovered much longer periods where the sun oscillates. Hear the sound created by the oscillations.
That the sun emits ringing sounds was discovered as early as the 60s, but then it was about periods that lasted about five minutes. Then science predicted that stars should also oscillate for much longer periods, and now it has been established that this is actually the case with the sun. It reports Max Planck Institute.
The oscillations can extend over the entire rotation of the sun – 27 days. They manifest on the surface in the form of huge vortices that move at five kilometers per hour. To find an explanation, physicists at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research and the University of Göttingen analyzed ten years of observed observations from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory.
Depends on differential rotation
The vortices are due to so-called differential rotation. This means that different parts of a gas body rotate at different speeds, and that mass moves due to the large temperature difference between the core and the outside of the sun. The researchers have discovered that the vibrations come in a dozen different versions – some with the greatest force at the poles, and others that have their center closer or at the equator of the sun.
As early as the 1990s, the short vibrations could be used to build up an image of the sun’s interior – in the same way that earthquakes can tell about the interior of our planet. But with the researchers’ new computer models, they can now look deep into the sun and see the long oscillations in the form of a three-dimensional structure. How does the sun sing then? Listen to the clip below:
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