source file: m1355.txt
Date: Sun, 15 Mar 1998 09:26:18 -0800

Subject: the Sun as musician

From: Aline Surman <stick@dnvr.uswest.net>

Very interesting stuff in the new issue of Scientific American, titled 
Magnificent Cosmos. An article on new discoveries about the Sun talks 
about how the Sun has moving sound waves inside it that cause the whole 
star to throb with the sound waves pulsations..."These oscillations, 
which can be tens of kilometers high and travel a few hundred meters per 
second, arise from sounds that course through the solar interior. The 
sounds  are trapped inside the sun; they cannot propagate through the 
near vacuum of space.(Even if they could reach Earth, they are too low 
for human hearing.) Nevertheless, when these sounds strike the Sun's 
surface and rebound back down, they disturb the gases there, causing them 
to rise and fall, slowly and rhythmically, with a period of about 5 
minutes..."   then, "The surface oscillations are the combined effect of 
about 10 million separate notes-each of which has a unique path of 
propagation and samples a well defined section inside the Sun. So to 
trace the star's physical landscape all the way through...we must 
determine the precise pitch of all the notes." Comments about this 
fascinating discovery will be well appreciated....Hstick