Between looking absolutely beautiful and probably killing us all some day, is there anything solar flares can’t do? Actually, no, there’s not. And here’s the dulcet tones of solar flare music that proves it:
Sound of the Sun (courtesy Richard Morton) by University of Sheffield
It turns out that the corona of the sun contains giant magnetic loops that vibrate much like a guitar string or a woodwind reed. And Sheffield University’s joyously named Professor Robertus von Fáy-Siebenbürgen has created software to convert those vibrations into music.
At the heart of the project is an earnest attempt to understand more about the physics behind the sun’s outer layers. But even if that effort winds up fruitless, at least we’ll get some killer licks out of it. [SoundCloud Fox via Fark]
Image Credit: NASA]
