00:00The sun was once a ball of hot gas, bigger than earth.
00:03Then gravity did its work, squeezing the young star until it was thousands of degrees hot.
00:08And when it reached that temperature, nuclear fusion ignited and the star was born.
00:12In the endless darkness of space, there are voices we cannot hear.
00:15Stars, those burning giants scattered across the universe, are not silent.
00:19They sing, their music isn't made of instruments or words, but of vibrations,
00:23hidden deep within their fiery cores.
00:25Every star pulses, trembles, and beats like a living heart.
00:28These tiny movements create waves, ripples that travel across the cosmos.
00:33Scientists call it stellar oscillation.
00:35We can't hear it with our ears, but with powerful instruments,
00:38we can transform those vibrations into sound.
00:40And what we find is breathtaking.
00:42Imagine a low hum from a giant red star, deeper than any note a human could sing,
00:47or the sharp high tones of smaller, younger stars, like the delicate strings of a cosmic harp.
00:52Each star carries its own unique rhythm, its own fingerprint written in sound.
00:55How do we know this?
00:56In 1970, using data from NASA's Apollo missions, scientists found that the sun was vibrating.
01:02They identified several modes of oscillation, like a wine glass vibrating in specific patterns when struck.
01:08These vibrations were happening in many stars, so scientists began listening to other stars,
01:12looking at how their light changed over time.
01:14By analyzing these changes, they were able to calculate how certain stars were pulsating,
01:19expanding and contracting in the rhythms that only the stars know.
01:22And what does the sun sound like?
01:24Well, think about this question. You wouldn't want your house's plumbing to shake every time you ran the water, right?
01:29That's why we insulate pipes to dampen the vibrations and reduce noise.
01:33But stars don't have insulation, they're balls of plasma.
01:36That's a super hot, electrically charged gas.
01:39So all that noise travels through the star and comes pouring out into space.
01:42In 2009, researchers used data from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory to capture the sun's vibrations.
01:48They analyzed 43,000 sunspots and tracked the changes in their heights.
01:53Then they converted those changes into sound.
01:55The result was a low, steady hum, a tone so deep it's impossible for humans to hear.
01:59But luckily, scientists figured out how to translate it into a range of human hearing.
02:04What they found was a song, a steady rolling rhythm that has been playing for billions of years.
02:08It's a lullaby that keeps time with the heartbeat of our solar system.
02:11Every sunrise you've ever seen, every shadow cast on Earth, has been part of a much greater symphony.
02:17Now, imagine you're standing on the edge of a pier, watching the waves roll out to sea.
02:21You can feel the rhythm of the ocean and the vibrations beneath your feet.
02:24That's kind of what it's like for a scientist listening to a star's song.
02:28They can learn all kinds of things about the star just from its vibrations, like its size, mass, and age.
02:33And if there's anything unusual going on inside the star, like the beginnings of a solar flare or a coronal mass ejection, scientists can hear it in the song, too.
02:41It's like having an orchestra full of informants, each one telling us something different about the universe around us.
02:46So remember, the next time you look up at the night sky, it's not just a bunch of pretty lights.
02:51It's an orchestra, vast and eternal.
02:53Every star is a musician, playing its part in the grand symphony of the cosmos.
02:57And we, along with every planet and comet and asteroid, are part of the song, too.
03:02We're all tiny notes in a melody that began long before us and will continue long after we are gone.
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