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Wheels On Fire
Heliocentric XIII
The astronomer was scheduled to do a presentation to a class of children next week. The subject they had been prepared for was: what does the sun sound like? They had been told that our Sun is 93,000,000 miles away, that it is surrounded by the vacuum of space, and that sound won’t travel through space — but with the right instrument, scientists can “hear” pulsations from the Sun.
Last week the astronomer and his team got the first response from the Michelson Doppler Imager, which had been mounted on a Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, which was circling a million miles from earth. They were going to record the acoustic pressure waves that bounce from one side of the Sun to the other.
As the sounds came in the team stood in awe. Instead of the distorted oscillations they expected what came in sounded like hoofbeats, horses stampeding, followed by the crunching sound of chariot wheels on a dirt road.
What on earth am I going to tell those kids?
Okay class. First we draw a circle. Then we draw lines coming from the edge outward. Different lengths is good, all the way around. These are called rays. Now. . . before we play the recording you were promised, we need to tell you a bit about Greek Mythology.
