Scientists record the sounds of the Sun
Slowest
Slower
Medium (British English)
Medium (N. American English)
Faster
Fastest
Try Sun's Sounds - Level 0 | Sun's Sounds - Level 1 | Sun's Sounds - Level 2
This useful resource has hundreds of ideas, activity templates, reproducible activities for …
and a whole lot more.
20 Questions | Spelling | Dictation
READING:
What does the Sun sound like? Perhaps you have never thought about what kinds of sounds the Sun makes, but scientists have found out. Researchers from the European Space Agency, NASA and the Solar and Heliospheric Agency studied 20 years of data to listen to the Sun. They say the Sun produces a low, deep "heartbeat" sound. The scientists used a solar observatory to measure vibrations from the Sun. They translated these vibrations into different sounds. These can tell the scientists what is happening inside the Sun. They can now understand more about solar flares, chemical reactions and other phenomena that happen inside the Sun and on its surface.
The scientists explained how they created the Sun's sound. Researchers from the Stanford Experimental Physics Lab turned data from the space agencies into a "song". Dr Alex Young said: "We don't have straightforward ways to look inside the Sun. We don't have a microscope to zoom inside the Sun, so using a star or the Sun's vibrations allows us to see inside of it." Dr Young continued: "Waves are travelling and bouncing around inside the Sun, and if your eyes were sensitive enough, they could actually see this." He added: "We are finally starting to understand the layers of the Sun and the complexity. That simple sound is giving us a probe inside a star. I think that's a pretty cool thing."
Try easier levels. The listening is a little shorter, with less vocabulary.
Sun's Sounds - Level 0 | Sun's Sounds - Level 1 | Sun's Sounds - Level 2
This page has all the levels, listening and reading for this lesson.
← Back to the sound of the Sun lesson.