SciShow Tangents - The Sun with Caitlin Hofmeister

Episode Date: February 12, 2019

This week, our producer Caitlin Hofmeister is joining the pod to talk about the Sun, and lending her expertise as a host of the YouTube channel SciShow Space. The Sun affects pretty much everything we do here on Earth, from our weather to our technology. So what schemes have scientists been cooking up to shield the Earth from the Sun? How have solar flares affected humans… and should we be afraid of them? And is “Guy” really a good nickname, or is this star more special than that? Sources:[Definition]https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~pberlind/atlas/htmls/note.html[Truth or Fail]https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/news-blog/geoengineering-solution-no-9-the-fl-2008-09-08/https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/geoengineering-holds-promise-but-the-technology-needs-work/https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/blocking-the-sun-is-no-plan-b-for-global-warming/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_sunshadehttps://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-11/uoa-ssm110306.php[Fact Off]Ocean mines:https://www.sciencealert.com/the-sun-may-have-detonated-dozens-of-us-sea-mines-uncovered-navy-documents-revealhttps://vva.vietnam.ttu.edu/repositories/2/digital_objects/83295https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2018SW002024http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WAMUS_Mines.php#Vietnam_War_%22Destructor%22_Mineshttp://www.navweaps.com/index_tech/tech-068.php#Magnetic_Mines2012 solar storm:[Ask the Science Couch]https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/iris/multimedia/layerzoo.htmlhttps://www.space.com/17160-sun-atmosphere.htmlhttps://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/science/objects/sun1.html[Butt One More Thing]https://newprairiepress.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1507&context=sttclhttps://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/georges-bataille-the-solar-anus

Hello and welcome to SciShow Tangents, the lightly competitive knowledge showcase starring some of the geniuses that make the YouTube series SciShow happen. This week, we've got another special guest, producer of SciShow, head of all of production and stuff, Caitlin Hoffmeister. How are you doing? Good. Hi. How are you? Good.

I'm great. What's your tagline? Cucumber melon. We've also got, as usual, Sam Schultz chewing on some nuts, it looks like. Passing that residue. Sam, what's your tagline? Thinking about Garfield. Always.

And we've also got Sari Riley here, general science communicator, writer, person. How are you doing, Sari? I'm okay. Tired. We're all very tired. This has been a long day for everybody in the office. Everybody's trying to get ready for all of the content that we have to produce. And Sarah, you got a tagline for me? Fruit nuggets.

Ooh. Is it deep fried? Don't tell me. I don't want to know. It could be good. It could be bad. I imagine it's like the little things on a raspberry. Each one is a little fruit nugget.

Oh, I love that. That sounds nice. Yes. It's whatever you want it to be. And I'm Hank Green. And my tagline today is personal pan person. They're all food. Why?

They're always all food. I don't know. It's what's on our minds, I guess. It's almost dinner time. It's four o'clock. That's true. So if you want to know what's going on, this is SciShow Tangents. And every week, four friends get together.

Five, really, because we have a producer in the room silently staring at us. Hi, Tuna. Good wave. We get together. We try to one-up, amaze, and delight each other with facts about the world and how we found out those facts about the world. And we're playing for glory, but we're also keeping score and awarding Hank bucks. So we do everything we can to stay on topic, but the podcast is called SciShow Tangents.

So it is possible that we will not be great at that. So you can go on a tangent, but if the rest of the crew deems that that tangent was unworthy, we will force you to give up one of your Hank bucks. So tangent with care, everyone. Now, as always, we introduced this week's topic with the traditional science poem this week

from Sari Reilly. Twinkle, twinkle, little star. star actually average is kind of what you are and when you're refracted by the atmosphere it's pretty but not always sparkly i fear our gassy glowing sphere of light helping sunbirds steer mid-flight damaging our cells with uvb or making us sneeze photically but thanks i guess that should be said because without son, we'd be dead. Man, you know what I hate is when people up the game. We need to do more bad science poems. I thought this was a bad science poem.

I wrote it so quickly with rhymezone.com, not font. Yeah, I'm sure you found photically on rhymezone.com. Yeah, I thought I made it up, but Merriam-Webster says it's a real word. Yeah, the problem is, you know, too much science and you're a writer. You bring way too much to the table. I don't know how you got on this podcast. You hired me. Yeah, so you definitely 100% get a Hank Buck for that science poem.

So we're talking about the sun. Yeah, so the sun is the topic today. Sari, define the sun for us. Well, it's a star. It's gravity affects all the planets and space debris in our solar system. We're specifically talking about the sun, meaning the star in our solar system.

Capital S sun. Capital S sun. People like to call other stars suns, but we're wrong. Are they not? Wait, are they not? I think they are. I think. Okay, they are suns. Are there other solar systems?

They're not the sun. Are they star systems? Because our sun is soul, right? Yes. But it is also the sun. Capital S, the sun is our sun. Yes. But other suns have other names. Yes. I think they're more often referred to as star systems. So disclaimer, astronomy is not my background.

Everything that I know is. But it's like if there's a guy named Guy. He is a guy, but he's named Guy. The sun is a sun named sun, right? Yes. Sure. Yeah, but Sam is a guy. But if I go to Sam's house, I'm not going to Guy's house.

Right. But if he was named Guy, you would be going to Guy's house and a Guy's house. Yes. That's what's up with the son. Okay. It is a son named son. I was like, Guy? I can't.

I call it Guy. But that's just me, and I don't like to admit that to anyone. But for the rest of this podcast, we're be calling it guy just in case our buddy guy buddy sky guy sky guy oh uh he's a yellow dwarf star okay oh dwarf yeah um it's quite big to me. Quite big, but actually pretty average in the scale of different kinds of stars. What does that mean? What does the dwarf part, does that refer to the size of it? Yeah, it refers to the luminosity of it. It's weird.

I had no idea how nomenclature works in astronomy, but it's technically a GV star. So G is a spectral classification, and that's how hot it is. So because it has a surface temperature around 6 000 kelvin that puts it in the g category of stars and then the v is luminosity and that's roman numerals from i on on the way up and that is like how bright it is and so like i is a super giant stars and then it becomes i. Right. II is bright giants. III is an ordinary giant. IV is a sub-giant. And then V is a ordinary main sequence star or like dwarf stars fall in that category.

Okay. Which is really weird. So they're only giants and dwarves or are they dwarves? Sounds like. Yeah. Yeah. It's either. You're binary.

You're a giant or a dwarf. That's what it's in between. In stars. Yeah. I feel like we have adequately defined our topic for the week. Yeah. The sun is a guy named Guy. And we are now, it's time to go on to Truth or Fail.

Truth or Fail is a portion of our podcast where one of our panelists has prepared three science facts for our education and our enjoyment. But only one of them is real. The other panelists have to figure out which one is real, either by deduction or wild guess. And if we get the true fact, we get a Hank Buck. If we are tricked, then Sam, our truth or fail presenter today, gets the Hank Buck. Sam, are you ready for some Sun facts? I don't know how it's going to go. All right. Well, this was hard. I thought this was really hard.

In my research of the Sun, I was like, we know too much about the sun. Yeah, it's boring. Old guy. Okay. Well, okay. So recently there's been a lot of talk about scientists proposing we dim the sun, which is just kind of a click-baity way it seems like to say shield the earth from the full effect of the sun, not like shoot a laser into it and make it dimmer or something like that.

Just go there with a backhoe and take some mass out. This sun does not need all of this hydrogen. It's too darn big and high. Well, so there have been lots of fairly prominent proposals on how to dim the sun. So which ones of these aren't real and which ones is real? Okay, so wait. There's only one't real and which ones is real? Okay. So wait. There's only one real one.

Only one is real. Okay. Batteries of rail guns continuously shooting explosive payloads full of sun-deflecting smog into the atmosphere. A fleet of autonomous boats sailing the ocean shooting mist into the atmosphere. Or man-made volcanoes spewing sulfuric acid into the atmosphere. Boy. Say the railguns again. So, do you know what a railgun is?

Some kind of magnetic force propulsion gun. Yeah. I know. I play a lot of video games. Vulcan Raven uses a rail gun in Metal Gear Solid, so I know what that is. Is he like a portable handheld one?

He's very large. He's a big man. So yeah, it's basically an electromagnetic cannon. Yeah. It's like, accelerates a lump of metal

to a very high speed. I'm not entirely sure how it would shoot smog up. But if you've got something going fast enough, it's going to incinerate, basically. So the compression wave ahead of it is going to get so hot

that the slug just might burn all the way up. So that could be a thing where... Could be. Mist was the second one with boats. A fleet of autonomous boats sailing the ocean, shooting mist was the second one with boats yeah a fleet of autonomous boats

sailing the ocean shooting mist into the atmosphere that seems like it would disperse to me it also seems like it would be it would make the problem worse

like water vapor is a greenhouse gas we shouldn't put more of that in the atmosphere but maybe I did hear once that the like planes

those clouds you see that planes make which I can't remember the name of contrails thank clouds you see that planes make which i can't remember the name of contrails thank you you know that are full of kids that are full of mind controlling chemicals and stuff uh they that like those actually significantly decrease the temperatures of places where there are lots of them so there's certain times of the year when they're much more common when it gets colder specifically um and there are certain places

where they're much more common because they're just like on air routes and that they are actually a significant enough blocker of solar radiation that it might actually decrease temperatures in some places. But that's not creating new water vapor in the atmosphere. That's just turning the water vapor into little droplets or little ice crystals. Right. The boats is? No, with the airplanes.

With the airplanes. But with a boat, that would seem like making new water vapor, which seems counterproductive probably. But I have heard something about autonomous boats. Which that just sounds not fun. I know ship tracks are a thing. So in the same way that planes release contrails, ships create clouds behind them called ship tracks,

and they crisscross the seas. And so I don't know if that is what this is referring to or if it's an entirely separate like spraying mist in the air. I think maybe what I, this might've been in a science fiction book, but something about autonomous boats pumping water vapor out in particular areas

because they were trying to like restart the jet stream or something. Maybe. I don't remember. I read a lot of science fiction in my life. But I feel like we should answer the question. Don't you hear the last one again? Yeah.

Volcanoes? What would sulfuric acid do? Sulfuric acid is definitely good for lowering the temperature of the Earth. Yeah. Sulfur compounds have previously lowered the temperature of the Earth. This is a thing that we know from the geological record and from volcanoes that when there's, you know, sulfur gets in the atmosphere, it creates compounds that reflect solar radiation back. And that has been the cause of, like, famines and stuff. But since we know it works and since also, like, you know, well, the earth spews sulfur in the atmosphere sometimes.

I'm like, so will we. We'll just do the same thing. I don't know what a man-made volcano is, though. You said a man-made volcano? I think it's just an oil derrick. Yeah, so they're just going to dig a hole until they hit the mantle. Yeah.

And then they'll come out. It's like the big things at the beginning of Blade Runner, you know? The big pyramids with the flames things at the beginning of Blade Runner, you know? The big pyramids with the flames shooting out the top of them. Okay. I mean, I like that one, but I don't think we're planning on building man-made volcanoes. But I don't know. Do you mean like a thing that is like a man-made volcano and spews out a similar amount of sulfur compounds? Yeah.

I guess that's what I was imagining, but that you would, like, maybe decorate it like your middle school project. So it's super good at shooting out sulfuric acid, you know? I feel like, this is the trap again, I feel like if man-made volcanoes were a headline,

I would have seen it. I would have known about it and I would have been like, what the fuck are we doing as humans creating volcanoes? Stop, back up, don't do that. Yeah, why are we making these things

when we're already afraid of them erupting? So, where would you even, back up, don't do that. Yeah, why are we making these things when we're already afraid of them erupting? Where would you even put one? I don't know. We're going to put them in good places where there aren't people. Middle of the ocean.

It's fine. Fine, yeah. Okay, so we've got railguns shooting smog, autonomous boats shooting mist, volcanoes shooting out sulfuric acid.

I'm going to go with volcanoes. Oh, no. Okay, I'm going to go with volcanoes. Oh, no. Okay, I'm going to go with railguns. Okay. No. Okay, well, I'm going to go with boats then. We're going to split it all across the top.

Yeah, because I can't decide, so that's how I'm doing it. Caitlin gets a Hank book. Oh, no. What? Thanks, guys. So they're called albedo. Is that what it is? Albedo.

Albedo yachts. Okay. And this is a proposed fleet of ships that would drift around the world under their own power, So they're called albedo. Is that what it is? Albedo. Albedo yachts. Okay. This is a proposed fleet of ships that would drift around the world under their own power with huge wind-powered rotors pushing columns of saltwater spray up into the air. Because saltwater makes denser, whiter clouds that would reflect more sun. And it's called marine cloud whitening is the process. Oh, wow. So that's one of the ideas that they have. But if we ever stopped doing it, everything would go back to normal within two weeks.

So we'd have to keep the boats in good order forever. But so they're worried that as boats get cleaner, they make less of the clouds that Sarah was talking about. So they're worried that that is such a major way to reflect light back that they need to replace it with something. And that's one of the ideas that they have is to replace it with that. So I accidentally wrote one that was real as I was researching it. Originally, they were railguns that shot. Well, the railgun part I learned later. But they were going to shoot.

I wrote that they shoot satellites into the air with mirrors on them that could fly around and reflect the sun wherever they needed to. the air with mirrors on them that could fly around and reflect the sun wherever they needed to. Then I read about this other proposal where they would shoot trillions of AI-controlled satellites into the air, but they wouldn't have mirrors. They would have lenses on them, and they would make a big lens in space that would diffuse the sun before it got to us. Like a big Fresnel lens. Nice. I love it. But they would have to shoot 20 million into space every five minutes for 10 years, which is why.

Every five minutes for 10 years. Well, I don't know. Maybe you can get more than 20 million at a time. Well, each gun would shoot one million and they'd need 20 guns. With a rail gun. Yeah, so that's why they need the rail guns. Because you can't do that.

Well, you can send up just like a big payload and a Falcon or something. Maybe. I don't know. I don't know. They wanted to use the rail guns really bad. They're like, we got these 20 rail guns. That seems like a, we have 20 rail guns. We might as well use them.

So they would form a long cylindrical cloud the diameter of the earth and 10 times longer and diffuse 10% of the sunlight before it got to us. I mean, that might be good because you could, like, focus where the light was going. So if there was, like, a big hurricane, you could be like, stop pointing the light at the hurricane spot. Whoa, that sounds very dangerous and cool.

It sounds awesome. It sounds very Star Trek The Next Generation. It sounds like we could really mess up bad. And the map made volcano thing kind of ties in with the plane thing that you were talking about. There's another idea to retrofit commercial airliners with sulfuric acid tanks. So they would shoot sulfuric acid out behind them as they went and make denser clouds. But then I read if geoengineering were halted all at once, there would be a rapid temperature and precipitation increase at 5 to 10 times the rate from gradual global warming. Why would that be? So if we started geoengineering.

And then stopped. And then stopped it. I don't know, man. Okay. I saw this in a couple articles. Well, it sounds like whoever did that study, you need to read the paper, man. Well, okay. It was a long thing.

Sounds like, why would that be? i haven't read that one i looked at sari it doesn't seem like that would make it like stopping it would make it suddenly happen faster to me but well it's like when you use afrin the nasal spray and like you're like my nose is running and they use afrin and then like it's great for like two hours and then your nose runs even more it's like that oh. That's what the paper said now that you mentioned that. It's like Afrin for the earth.

Yeah. So I got two books. I got zilch books. I have one from the poem. I have one from the autonomous boat. Now let's go get some real books. Welcome back.

Hank Buck totals. Sari has one. I have zero. Sam has two. Kaylin has one. And now it is time for the fact off, where two of our panelists have brought science facts to present to the other panelists in an attempt to blow their minds. The people receiving the facts each have a Hank Buck to award to the fact they like the most. If they hate the facts, they can throw those Hank Bucks in the trash.

And I and Caitlin are going to present our science facts. And we're going to do that by the person who most recently got a sunburn. Oh, that is probably me because I always get sunburns. I haven't had a sunburn in like three years because I am extremely careful. I'm pretty careful, but I think I got a sunburn probably in May or June. Once you have a baby,

you go like very careful about putting all of their sunscreen on and then you're like, well, we're here. We're doing it. Might as well get myself, too. If he needs it so bad. All right, Caitlin, what's your fact? Okay. During the Vietnam War, the U.S. Navy developed and planted destructor mines off the coast of North Vietnam.

And several of the bombs were a type of magnetic influence sea mines that would be triggered when they detected changes in the magnetic field. So they're invented by the British just when they detected a change in the magnetic field above them. But by the 70s, they would go off when they felt an increase and then a decrease. Okay. So it was like when ships would go over them. So they didn't just wait for an increase. They needed both the increase and the decrease.

Yeah. would go over them. So they didn't just wait for an increase. They needed both the increase and the decrease. Yeah. And so on August 4th, 1972, a U.S. aircraft was flying near the naval minefield off of Han La, Vietnam. And over the course of about 30 seconds,

they observed 20 to 25 unplanned explosions of these mines. And they saw 25 to 30 mud spots of possible like earlier explosions. But they think what caused these explosions is those mines going off because of a solar storm that happened on August 4th, 1972. And it included an X-class solar flare, which is the biggest solar flare. And this one, it actually, there was like in the 1800s, there was a huge solar storm that everybody kind of measures against to talk about.

But this one wasn't as big as that. But the X-class solar flare made it to Earth in 14.6 hours, which usually like that's four to six times faster than it would usually take like solar wind to get to Earth. So super fast. So they think that this solar storm was just it wasn't that powerful, but it was just really fast because some of the solar flares kind of cleared space for this one to be really fast. So they changed the magnetic field over those mines really rapidly. And so they thought it was a boat. They thought, quote unquote, thought it was a boat and then they all exploded. And the code name for deploying the mines was called Operation Pocket Money. So I think you should give me your Hank bucks. All right. So that is amazing.

So my fact is also about a solar flare. So solar flares, part of the reason they change, like they induce a magnetic field and they induce a current because like it's coming to the earth and the earth is spinning. So the objects on the earth, whereas the charged particles aren't spinning, they're coming straight toward us and the magnetic fields aren't spinning. They're coming straight toward us. And the magnetic fields aren't spinning. So we spin in the magnetic field of this solar, like, coronal mass ejection or whatever. And that induces an electric current, which would probably be the thing that that mine is sensing, like looking to sense. That makes sense. Great job.

We should make all mines have some kind of way that we can do like a mass blow them all up blow them all up yeah it seems like a good idea seems like a good idea maybe maybe we should just let guy do it yeah yeah yeah that's not like you're saying god so sky guy sky guy sky guy every so like every solar and also solar flares happen in like very, as far as we can tell, very regular cycles. And so there's just like a period of like, if the mine has been on the earth through a solar flare cycle, it's exploded. It will be cleared away. Is this the first time we've created mines? Like these mines were specifically created to track ships and changing magnetic fields?

No, they existed in like world war one oh okay world war two but this is the first time they went off they had um detonators they had like self-destruct things that would happen after a certain amount of time but this happened like 30 days before their self-destruct um activation was supposed to happen so weird it's like at least it be, this was declassified information. So there could be things that inadvertently exploded because of the sun.

Cool. So by fact, in 2012, what may have been the largest ever, well, it probably was the largest ever coronal mass ejection happened.

So the sun spat out this coronal mass ejection that was so hot and spicy that it very nearly was a global catastrophe for the earth. So solar flares, they're a thing. And it's like, I'm not going to explain how magnetic fields in the sun work because I don't know. But when all the magnetic fields bubble up in the right way, the sun will just burp out like literal billions of tons of high energy plasma

traveling at roughly 1% the speed of light. And these charged particles will then slam into our magnetosphere. They dent it, they distort it, and then they interact with our electronics. And scientists think that

if this particular 2012 burp had hit us and it just happened to not, that the solar flare was facing the opposite direction from us, it would have likely knocked out our communication satellites, possibly made it so that there would be areas of the Earth where power was not restored for months or even years. a global disaster that we missed because of pure luck. So it was better odds than a coin flip that it would miss us, but more like a one in four chance that we would have been hit by that flare. But it came out of the side of the sun facing away from us. So instead of a global catastrophe in 2012, scientists talked about it and no one else noticed. Will we know if this is going to happen to us? Yeah, but with like not a lot of notice. Okay, and nothing really you can do about it.

There is nothing you can really do about it. Okay. So here's the thing. There maybe are things you can do about it, but we have not put any of them into place. Okay. So we would need a system for like literally disconnecting power supplies. So like taking transformers offline. And there's really nothing we can do

to protect the communication satellites. But the biggest concern is that like if every transformer in America blows up simultaneously, it replacing that and fixing them because it's like, you don't can't really fix them. You know, it's like all of the copper wires

in them just- They're either broken or they're not broken. Yeah. So you'd need to replace them all and that would be a long, long time. And events like this is that like it matters which side of the earth is facing the sun when they happen.

So it's like, it's not global. It's whichever part of the, so it could just like hit the Pacific Ocean and it wouldn't be as big of a deal. It would still affect a lot of people, obviously. Hawaii would be in bad shape, particularly. And also probably coasts of both of the sides of the ocean. But like if it hit like smack on, you know, Beijing, that would be much, much worse. Yeah. I guess this is like a magnetosphere

question, but how like would you see effects of electronics across the globe or is it so, so targeted that it's only like within a certain radius of where the solar flare? Yeah. So it depends on a lot of qualities of the mass ejection. So you have the speed at which the particles are traveling. You have the sort of like wave front, how thick the wave front is. So it can be like a sustained hit, like being hit constantly. And so the earth could like spin and have it basically cover the whole planet but that's usually a lower intensity event when the wave front is more spread out

what I didn't realize is I was sort of imagined that when these happened it was like a laser beam and so like and it could happen at any angle so the sun's shooting them up into the end of the up down

up and down and side and they're just like very focused but they're actually come out more like a big ripple in a pond. And by the time they hit Earth's orbit, like when it's on the surface of the sun, it's fairly narrow, but it ripples out. And by the time it hits Earth's orbit, it covers roughly a quarter of like the orbit of the Earth in the sort of like animation that because it was 2012, NASA was actually able to

really study this particular ejection. And, you know, you can sort of see how it travels through the solar system. You can check out some video of it. It's very cool. And they also happen on the solar system plane. So they can't shoot up. Yeah, just because that's how the sun is built.

What? Yeah, because that's the way it spins. Yeah. So like for whatever reason, that's the way it spins. Yeah. So, like, for whatever reason, that's how the magnetic lines line up. Weird. Guy better not burp

anytime soon. Yeah, stop drinking Coca-Cola, Sky Guy. Well, I'm going to give mine to Caitlin. That was real good. It was really good. But we almost died.

Well, I know. If we had all died, I would have given it to you. But nobody heard about it. Yeah. I'm also going to give mine to Caitlin. It was a good fact. It's a real good fact. I was a scientist in 2012, so I knew about yours beforehand. Can I ask a really important question? Yeah, it's going to cost you a hangover. I don't care. We watched an episode of The Twilight Zone where the Earth's getting closer to the sun all the time. And they said, now there's no night.

Would you ever be close enough to the sun ever that there would never be a night? No, there's night on Mercury. That's what I thought. Now there's no night. The sun now surrounds us. Yes, there would never be any night if we were inside the sun. It would be very bright all the time. There was no more night.

The writers didn't really think about this line very much. Powerful line. It was a good one. Everybody died in the end. Yeah. All right, now it's time for Ask the Science Couch, where we ask listener questions to our couch of finely honed scientific minds. This question is going to be read by Caitlin.

All right. River at Shattered Time Below asks, does the sun have an atmosphere? The sun does have an atmosphere. I mean, what's an atmosphere, Sari? I looked this up because I didn't know. The best definition I can find, it's like all the gases surrounding the Earth or another planet. So you have the surface and then the gases surrounding it. The tricky part about the sun, it's all gaseous.

Yeah. So it's not a planet. It's not a planet. Yeah. So I don't know if atmosphere is specific to planets. I don't think it is. I think the sun has an atmosphere. Like the corona is charged gases stuck to the sun by gravity.

There's more than that. In the corona. Then the corona that is considered part of the sun's atmosphere. Oh, okay. Which is interesting. I didn't know anything about this. So if it's considered part of the sun's atmosphere. Oh, okay. Which is interesting. I didn't know anything about this. So if it's considered part of the sun's atmosphere, then the atmosphere does scientifically definitely have an atmosphere?

I think so. Yeah. NASA seems to say yes. Yeah. So there's a point on the sun. It's called the photosphere of the sun is the point at which we can't see any deeper into the core. So there's like a layer of the sun where it gets at which we can't see any deeper into the core. So there's like a layer of the sun where it gets, I don't know, the article that I was reading described it as like

walking into a thick fog and there's a point in that fog where you can't see any deeper, like your visual information disappears. That is where the photosphere starts. And that's where we consider the sun's surface to be be yeah okay for lack of a better way of defining it because there's not like a hard rocky line where we can say this is one substance gases i hadn't really ever thought about that because oftentimes i see pictures of the sun and it looks like there's a straight line where the sun starts yeah but obviously that's just because it's very big yeah it's very big but that's where you can start seeing it. The beginning of the atmosphere. That's where sunspots form, is the photosphere.

When it gets colder, then those become dark spots that we can observe. So next is the chromosphere. It's relatively thin, and you can sort of see the reddish glow during a total solar eclipse. That's from the chromosphere. It's where temperature starts heating up again. So it's really hot in the center of the sun. Then it cools down to a point and then it starts heating up again. So the chromosphere is like the transition where it starts getting hotter again. And then after that is the corona,

which is what you were talking about, where it's like very gaseous in a total solar eclipse. You can see it like all the wispy stuff. That's where solar flares happen. That's where ions and charged particles get flung out as solar wind. It's the least dense part and it's also

extremely, extremely hot and we have no idea why besides magnetism. Yeah. Crud. Yeah. Sure. You know, energy

being pumped around by a very big, beautiful sky guy. So thanks, everybody. If you want to ask the Science Couch, you can tweet your question using the hashtag AskSciShow. Thanks to Ash Bunny and SK Berghoff and everybody else who tweeted us your questions. And now we have our final scores.

Sari, you have one Hank buck. Sam, you have one Hank buck. Hank, you have one Hank buck. Sam, you have one Hank buck. Hank, you never got anything. And Kaylin, our special guest comes out with three. If you like this show and you want to help us out,

it's easy to do that. First, you can leave us a review wherever you listen. Like Teresa McD and MECD did. It's super helpful and it helps us know

what you think about the show. Second, you can tweet out your favorite moment from this episode. We love it when people do that. And finally, if you want to show your love for Tangents, you can just tell people about us. Thanks for joining us.

I have been Hank Green. I've been Sari Reilly. I've been Sam Schultz. And I've been Kaylin Hoffmeister. SciShow Tangents is a co-production of Complexly and WNYC. It's produced by all of us and by Joseph Tuna Mettish. Our art is by Hiroko Matsushima and our sound design is by Tuna over there as well. Our social

media organizer is Victoria Bongiorno and we couldn't make any of this stuff without our patrons on Patreon. Thank you! And remember, the mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be lighted. But one more thing. There's a French writer named Georges Bataille who published a short text called The Solar Anus in 1931. It's not really safe for work because it's just like astronomy and earth science mashed up with sex.

But it's apparently a big old parody of philosophy like Cartesianism and art like surrealism at the time. I read it all today. How was it? It was. It's short. Uh huh. It's like bad erotic literature.

Is it like slash fic about Sky Guy? Yeah, kinda. Oh, boy. Yeah.