Super Solar Storms with Lika Guhathakurta

**Neil deGrasse Tyson** (0:00)
So, the sun is still at it.

**Chuck Nice** (0:01)
But what's it really up to, Neil?

**Neil deGrasse Tyson** (0:05)
Lika Guhathakurta knows.

**Chuck Nice** (0:08)
Yes.

**Neil deGrasse Tyson** (0:09)
Coming up on StarTalk. Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.
This is StarTalk. Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. Got Chuck Nice with me. Hey, baby.

**Chuck Nice** (0:32)
That's right. Your personal ass. Astrophysicist.

**Neil deGrasse Tyson** (0:40)
Deal with you later on that one. So, Chuck, we have a returning guest.

**Chuck Nice** (0:45)
Yes. Someone we very much like.

**Neil deGrasse Tyson** (0:48)
One of the all-time favorites.

**Chuck Nice** (0:49)
Yes. A StarTalk favorite.

**Neil deGrasse Tyson** (0:51)
Yeah. We have Lika Guhathakurta.

**Chuck Nice** (0:54)
Yes.

**Neil deGrasse Tyson** (0:54)
I even think I pronounced it right that way.

**Lika Guhathakurta** (0:56)
Right, you did it.

**Neil deGrasse Tyson** (0:57)
Lika, welcome back to StarTalk.

**Lika Guhathakurta** (1:00)
Thank you, and it's great to be here and great to have Chuck in the show. What can I say?

**Chuck Nice** (1:05)
Yeah. Well, thank you, Lika.

**Neil deGrasse Tyson** (1:08)
You're one of the world's experts on the sun, and those who are consuming this via video, you may notice that her hair is as bright as the sun.

**Chuck Nice** (1:17)
Yes.

**Neil deGrasse Tyson** (1:18)
Yes.

**Chuck Nice** (1:19)
Sun kissed, as they might say.

**Neil deGrasse Tyson** (1:20)
Sun kissed, perhaps.

**Chuck Nice** (1:22)
Yes.

**Neil deGrasse Tyson** (1:22)
There it is.

**Lika Guhathakurta** (1:22)
Don't go there.

**Chuck Nice** (1:24)
Don't go there.

**Neil deGrasse Tyson** (1:27)
So, you're an astrophysicist, and the technical name for your subspecialty, I guess, would be heliophysicist. We got that right?

**Lika Guhathakurta** (1:36)
You got that right.

**Chuck Nice** (1:38)
All right.

**Lika Guhathakurta** (1:39)
A brand new word about 20 years old.

**Chuck Nice** (1:42)
Oh, cool.

**Neil deGrasse Tyson** (1:43)
Oh.

**Chuck Nice** (1:43)
I did not know that.

**Neil deGrasse Tyson** (1:44)
Did not know that either.

**Lika Guhathakurta** (1:45)
Brand new discipline, word perhaps people have used it, but it's a brand new discipline.

**Neil deGrasse Tyson** (1:52)
A thing unto itself. There you go. Except you were interested in the sun long before that. So what attracted you?
Just because we like a little bit of bio on people every now and then, and someone with such intense interest in such an omnipresent object, you can ask, why isn't everybody interested in it? Or how come more people aren't? So what got you into it?

**Lika Guhathakurta** (2:16)
You know, it's not a traditional approach, right?
So I'll give the most honest answer I can give, which is, I came to the sun almost by accident. I was trained as an astrophysicist, interested in stars in general, and you know what that is all about, Neil. Then I realized that we spend studying stars that are light years away. And we have one star, which sits only eight light minutes from us, and allows us to examine it in exquisite detail. So the sun became the most exciting laboratory, I could imagine. We can see the surface change, listen to its interior, fly through its atmosphere of late, and watch its influence literally move all the way to earth and the edge of the solar system, which is our Milky Way galaxy.

**Neil deGrasse Tyson** (3:24)
Okay, so right now, do you live in the sun? Is this your...
And you just come out for interviews?

**Lika Guhathakurta** (3:33)
We do live in the atmosphere of a living, breathing star, what can I say?

**Neil deGrasse Tyson** (3:39)
Oh, good, I'd like to see what she did there. That was good. So now, I remember coming through graduate school, there was a subfield of heliophysics called helioseismology, and they were, you know, borrowing the word from earth, seismology and earth, as you watch earthquake waves move through the earth, and they refract and bend, and you can infer what the middle of the earth is like from the delayed signals from different points on earth's surface. And so, that made sense to me because earth is, like, solid. The sun is not solid. So, when I heard them talk about this, I was like, yeah, okay, let's see what you got. But it's a real subfield. Could you tell me how that works? And is what's going on in the middle of the sun settled science at this point?

**Lika Guhathakurta** (4:32)
That's, well, you have to give me some time.
A lot of questions kind of coupled together. Helioseismology is very much a well-established subgroup of heliophysics, solar physics. It's exactly how you describe. Now, sun is not solid. I think we all know that. But there are vibrations, some vibrations taking place in the interior of the sun. And that's what we, so we image the vibrations. And then infer, essentially, the interior properties of the sun, like the convection zone.