Into the Sun(adapted from )

What would happen if you could be instantly transported to the surface of the sun for only one nanosecond? Believe it or not, this wouldn't even warm you.

The temperature of the surface of the Sun is about 5,800 K,give or take. If you stayed there for a while, you'd be cooked to a cinder, but a nanosecond is not very long—it's enough time for light to travel almost exactly a foot.

I'm going to assume you're facing toward the Sun. In general, you should avoid looking directly at the Sun, but it's hard to avoid when it takes up a full 180 degrees of your view.

In that nanosecond, about a microjoule of energy would enter your eye.A microjoule of light is not a lot. If you stare at a computer monitor with your eyes closed, then open them and shut them quickly, your eye will take in about as much light from the screen during your reverse blinkas it would during a nanosecond on the Sun's surface.

During the nanosecond on the Sun, photons from the Sun would flood into your eye and strike your retinal cells. Then, at the end of the nanosecond, you'd jump back home. At this point, the retinal cells wouldn't even have begun responding. Over the next few million nanoseconds (milliseconds) the retinal cells—having absorbed a bunch of light energy—would get into gear and start signaling your brain that something had happened.

You would spend one nanosecond on the Sun, but it would take 30,000,000 nanoseconds for your brain to notice. From your point of view, all you would see was a flash. The flash would seem to last much longer than your time on the Sun, only fading as your retinal cells quieted down.

The energy absorbed by your skin would be minor—about 10-5joules per cm2of exposed skin. For comparison, according to the IEEE P1584 standard, holding your finger in the blue flame of a butane lighter for one second delivers about 5 joules per cm2to the skin, which is roughly the threshold for receiving a second-degree burn. The heat during your Sun visit would be five orders of magnitude weaker. Other than the dim flash in your eyes, you wouldn't even notice.

But what if you got the coordinates wrong?

The Sun's surface is relatively cool. It's hotter than Phoenix, Arizona, but compared to the interior, it's downright chilly. The surface is a few thousand degrees, but the interior is a fewmilliondegrees.What if you spent a nanosecondthere?

TheStefan-Boltzmann lawlets us calculate how much heat you'd be exposed to while inside the Sun.It's not good. You would exceed the IEEE P1584B standard for second-degree burns after onefemtosecond in the Sun.A nanosecond—the time you're spending there—is 1,000,000 femtoseconds. This does not end well for you.

There's some good news: Deep in the Sun, the photons carrying energy around have very short wavelengths—they're mostly a mix of what we'd consider hard and soft X-rays.This means they penetrate your body to various depths, heating your internal organs and also ionizing your DNA, causing irreversible damage before they even start burning you.

In Greek legend,Icarusflew too close to the Sun, and the heat melted his wings and he fell to his death. But "melting" is a phase change which is a function of temperature, a measure of internal energy, which is the integral of incident power fluxover time. His wings didn't melt because he flew too close to the Sun, they melted because he spent too much time there.

Visit briefly, in little jumps, and you can go anywhere.

  1. What word is the closest in meaning to “dim” (line 38)?
  2. Bright
  3. Hot
  4. Dark
  5. Clear
  6. What is the purpose of the story of Icarus in the final paragraph (lines 59-65).
  7. To explain what Greek believed about the sun.
  8. To explain that the heat from the sun is hotter the closer you are to the sun.
  9. To explain that length of time is more important that distance from the sun.
  10. To explain what melting really means.
  11. Which of the following sentences represents the main idea of the article?
  1. Being in the sun’s interior for 1 nanosecond is not dangerous, but being on the sun’s surface for 1 nanosecond is.
  2. Being on the sun’s surface for 1 nanosecond is not dangerous, but being in the sun’s interior for 1 nanosecond is.
  3. Being on the sun’s surface for 1 nanosecond is dangerous, and being in the sun’s interior for 1 nanosecond is extremely dangerous.
  4. Being on the sun’s surface for 1 nanosecond is not dangerous, and being in the sun’s interior for 1 nanosecond is also not dangerous.
  1. Which of the following is NOT true?
  2. The blue flame of a lighter is dangerous.
  3. A femtosecond is faster than a nanosecond.
  4. The flash of light would last longer than one nanosecond.
  5. Your brain would see the sun’s light while you are on the sun.
  6. What does “it” mean on line 17?
  7. computer screens
  8. light
  9. eye
  10. reverse blink
  11. The author would most likely agree with which of the following statements?
  12. Visiting the surface of the sun for a nanosecond is a bad idea.
  13. You can visit any hot place if you visit it quickly enough.
  14. Visiting the interior of the sun for a few femtoseconds is safe.
  15. You can visit hot places if you do not get too close.