He calculates each of these cells emits about 100 to 300 watts of sound energy per square meter, about the same as a police siren. And because the Sun’s surface area is around 10,000 times larger than the Earth: “ Imagine 10,000 Earths covered in police sirens, all screaming,” he says.

Of course, the Earth is around 92 million miles from the Sun, so the sound would be somewhat attenuated by the time it got here. DeForest pegs the Sun’s din on Earth at around 100 decibels, a bit quieter than the speakers at a rock concert. That’s during the day, of course. At night, as we turn away from the Sun, the roar would fade. Perhaps we might even be able to hold conversations.



The sound itself would be something like a dull roar, deForest says, because the sound waves coming at us would be composed of so many different frequencies. Imagine standing next to Niagara Falls all of the time (it would actually be even louder — Niagara clocks in at around 90 decibels).

Thought experiment

But to concoct a world where the Sun is audible, we need to forget a few key things: The vacuum of space, of course, but also the fact that sound waves tend to steepen as they travel over long distances. This means that they will eventually break upon themselves and crash, much like ocean waves, deForest says.

In this scenario, even if sound could travel through space, the waves wouldn’t even make it out of the Sun’s corona, or atmosphere. Instead, they’d implode as shock waves, dissolving into heat.

And, if we extrapolate the experiment to the realm of biology, it’s possible an audible Sun might have negated the very concept of hearing itself. Any creatures that evolved in a world suffused by a perpetual roar might have very different uses for hearing. Indeed, given they likely couldn’t ever make out any useful sounds at all, organisms living in this fictional world may never have evolved the ability to perceive sound.

“Sound is much more useful to us in an environment where we’re not at a rock concert all of the time,” deForest says. “It’s fair to say in that hypothetical situation we probably wouldn’t be able to hear at all.”In all, it’s best the Sun’s clamor remains locked away by the nothingness of space. But the thought experiment is a potent reminder of our star’s awesome power. Anything that could make itself heard 92 million miles away is a potent force indeed.