How A NASA Probe Solved a Scorching Solar Mystery

quantamagazine.org

46 points·jyunwai··5 comments

The Parker Solar Probe is super cool. It's the fastest ever macro man made object, and will go even faster during its closest pass next year. It's also the man made object that's experienced the highest rate of time dilation relative to Earth; during its most recent close pass it was losing around 1000 seconds (~17 minutes) per hundred years due to its speed and proximity to the sun.

This is probably adding some interesting data processing steps in a few scientists work… you don’t normally have to adjust for a changing time dilation, but between the change in speed passing through the orbit, and the number of seconds being lost, there’s probably a few instruments where they have to account for the difference in the data over the course of each orbit!

Does any of the study of the sun's magnetic activity apply to controlling the plasma in fusion reactors?

> Our sun is the best observed star in the entire universe.

How does the author know that? If you are going to speak about the whole universe, you have to take into account the possibility that others are observing their own sun way more than we are observing ours.

Not really. Given an infinite universe it’s certain that any measured thing will be greater elsewhere, so “in the universe” always has an implicit “…as far as we know”. Always. Without exception. And because of that, there’s no need wasting time with the weasel words.

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