Kind: captions
Language: en
for countless Generations humans have
felt the sun's warmth and watched it
rise and set some societies have
literally worshiped it and yet until
quite recently the sun was a mystery no
one really knew where it came from what
it was made of or why it gave off light
at
all today the situation is different
because we've learned to read something
called the electromagnetic spectrum we
know a lot about the Sun and are
learning more every day here's how it
works like most stars our sun is
basically a big nuclear furnace deep
inside its core immense gravitational
pressure fuses hydrogen into helium
these reactions release a tremendous
amount of energy in the form of
electromagnetic
radiation because our sun is huge and
dense the particles that carry this
energy called photons can take thousands
of years to reach the surface but once
they break free it's about an 8 and 1/2
minute journey to Earth the photons that
carry energy from the Sun travel in the
form of waves alternating electric and
magnetic fields push each other forward
at the constant speed of light but even
though they travel at the same speed not
all photons pack the same punch
those that carry more energy oscillate
more quickly with a shorter distance
between the crust of each wave this
distance between one Crest and another
is known as the light's wavelength and
the shorter it is the more energy the
light
carries together the entire range of
possible wavelengths is known as the
electromagnetic
spectrum every second the sun emits
light across different parts of the
spectrum from low energy radio waves and
microwaves to high energy X-rays and
gamma
rays the problem is our eyes are tuned
only to a narrow sliver in the middle
the so-called visible light
range in the early 1600s scientists
first learned how to magnify this light
from the skies with glass
lenses continued improvements helped
astronomers see the sun's surface in
more
detail but no matter how large the
telescope there's only so much we can
learn from looking at visible light the
real revolution in astronomy has come
with our ability in recent decades to
see a much wider range of
wavelengths additional layers of the sun
which burn at much higher temperatures
became visible and ever since the
dynamic life of our sun and All Stars
has been coming into Focus
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