Twinkle, Twinkle, Musical Star

Tonight I looked up at the stars with a new sense of awe and wonder. Stars have always inspired music, poetry, and childhood wishes. They provide a natural compass pointing to North at night and East and West during the day. Our most favorite star, the sun, gives us life sustaining heat and light. We could not live without stars!

Although we have so many uses for these heavenly balls of gas, their true and complete identity has remained a mystery. Now though, scientists have discovered that stars create music. This music provides answers to century old questions.

For some time, we have known that the surface of stars is comprised mostly of helium and hydrogen. However, scientists were not able to discover the content of a star’s core until a scientist noticed something interesting. The slight variations of fluctuating light (known as oscillations) on the surface of a star vibrate and create sound waves. These wobbly motions can be converted into sounds just like seismic waves from the earth. (see blog: “Rocking Some Serious Science”)

The discovery of sound waves from the stars has given scientists the opportunity to discover the temperature, chemical composition and motions throughout the interior of a star. Two new branches of science have emerged as a result from these acoustic vibrations, “Stellar Seismology” (the study of motion on a star’s surface) and “Helioseismology” (the study of motion on the sun’s surface).

The interior of the sun has excellent acoustics. It transmits sound efficiently since it is a spherical ball of hot gas. Scientists believe that the motion of the gas going the hot core to the cooler surface (convection) forms strong unstable currents of vibrating light, which produce a wide range of random acoustical noise. The pulsating sound from most stars generally has a rhythmic repeating pattern. Additionally, the sound the star makes depends on its age, size, and chemical composition.

To listen these heavenly tunes including sounds from two different stars, a “song” from a globular cluster (tight group of stars) and “music” from the sun, visit this page.

-posted by Miss Jesikah whose daughter often falls asleep while mommy sings “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”