Getting Closer To The Sun Than Ever Before

Short Wave

NPR

Daily News, Nature, Life Sciences, Astronomy, Science, News

4.7 • 6K Ratings

🗓️ 9 December 2019

⏱️ 10 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

An ambitious mission to get a spacecraft close to the sun has revealed a strange region of space filled with rapidly flipping magnetic fields and rogue plasma waves. Science correspondent Nell Greenfieldboyce explains how the Parker Solar Probe may help answer one of the biggest mysteries surrounding the sun. Follow Emily Kwong on Twitter @emilykwong1234. Email the show at [email protected].

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.
0:04.3	Hey there, Emily Kwong, Shortwave's reporter.
0:07.6	I've got Nell Greenfield Boys and PR Science correspondent here.
0:10.8	Hello.
0:11.8	Hello. You're here to talk about one of the biggest mysteries surrounding the sun.
0:15.7	That's right. So one of the weirdest things about the sun is the fact that it's atmosphere.
0:20.9	It's corona. That's the part that we all saw during the total solar eclipse,
0:25.2	the sort of ghostly ring around the sun.
0:27.9	That's its atmosphere and it's hotter than the sun's surface.
0:31.7	Weird.
0:32.5	Which is weird. I mean, it's sort of like, imagine the sun as being like a campfire.
0:37.0	And you've been around a campfire and the campfire is hot.
0:39.5	And imagine if you were walking away from the campfire further and further out
0:43.7	and you just got hotter.
0:45.6	It just felt like things were getting hotter instead of getting colder.
0:48.7	That's bizarre.
0:49.5	It seems to violate the laws of physics, doesn't it?
0:51.9	I mean, that's really strange.
0:53.2	Yeah.
0:54.0	Why does the sun behave this way? Do we know why?
0:56.9	We don't know. And in fact, there's a lot we don't know about the sun.
1:00.0	It supports life on Earth and it's very important.
	...

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