Angaston, South Australia: Does the sun make a noise?

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Here’s something interesting I ran across earlier today:

“People who have been deaf from birth but gained their hearing later in life often say that they expected the sun to make a noise.”

Since I’ve never been deaf (a concept that Jamie may well dispute), I’d never given it a thought.

But it makes sense. The sun is a thermonuclear reaction a gazillion times larger than the largest nuclear weapon, so I’d guess that it makes an incredible din but we’re just too far away to hear it. Or maybe it makes a deafening noise that we can’t hear because empty space lacks an atmosphere through which that noise can be transmitted.

Maybe a reader with a more scientific background can chime in? (I’m talking to you, Dr Parkinson.)

But I guarantee that if the sun did make a sound, nowhere would it be louder than here in Australia.

UPDATE April 1, 2024: I just found this on Astronomy.com:

…The Sun does make actual sound. We just can’t hear it because space is a vacuum, so the sound waves don’t have a way of getting to us. But if we could hear the constant roar, it’d be pretty loud, even from here. One heliophysicist crunched the numbers and estimates the noise would be around 110 decibels, or about the same volume as speakers at a rock concert.”

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  1. My friend I know you’re having a very good time but we need you back in the USA and if you don’t wanna go, well, you can stay. send Jamie here. I hope you’re having fun. we miss you.
    Meff and the Eggsquisite café family

  2. Perhaps the sun’s din is just too low a frequency for us to hear? Maybe that’s why whales live under water? Or maybe the sun talks to whales? Meff, we will gladly take Jamie and Jim’s place in the Eggsquisite family seeing as they have abandoned you. 🙂

    • Very impressive, Rick. I think your answer comes very close to matching Bradford’s. You, however, get bonus points for coming up with the whale theory.

  3. The sun produces a cacophony, but in the electromagnetic spectrum. Virtually all frequencies from UV to visible to Infrared and down into the communication bands. We used it to calibrate azimuth when I was in charge of large L-band radars in 1958/9. If there was a continuous atmosphere from the sun to earth, I am certain the noise would be deafening!