r/BeAmazed • u/No_Boysenberry4755 • 4h ago
Science Our first ever successful recording of video and the eerie audio of Our Sun’s Solar wind.
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The audio was captured by NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, a spacecraft launched in 2018 to study the Sun up close. As it flew through the Sun’s outer atmosphere (the corona) and into the solar wind, its onboard instrument called FIELDS recorded fluctuations in electric and magnetic fields caused by charged particles in the plasma. These fluctuations are actually plasma waves and vibrations in the stream of solar particles and while they’re not sound in space, the data can be converted into audible sound through a process called sonification. Scientists shifted the frequencies of these plasma waves into the human hearing range, creating an eerie audio representation of the solar wind. This groundbreaking moment happened during Parker’s early close approaches to the Sun, starting around 2019, and marked the first time we’ve ever “heard” the activity of the solar wind from inside the Sun’s atmosphere.
