Sound waves could be ringing across the surfaces of stars.
A team led by Ravindra Kumar of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai, India, zapped a hot, dense cloud of plasma with an ultrafast laser and found that the rapid heating of the plasma generated acoustic oscillations with a frequency of roughly one trillion cycles per second.
The authors say that the plasma within stars could also be bunching up in such waves, as a natural consequence of the way plasma flows.
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Zapped plasma emits sounds. Nature 520, 9 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/520009e
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/520009e
