Could you walk on the sun?

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If you could somehow be shielded from the heat, radiation, gravity and everything else that would destroy you, is there a surface dense enough that it could support your weight?

In: Planetary Science

4 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

The photosphere of the sun (the layer of the sun that we see as the ‘surface’) looks solid because that’s where photons can escape from. But it’s actually not just one solid layer – the layer at which the sun’s plasma is thin enough that photons can escape is several hundred kilometers deep. So while it looks like one surface, some of that light is actually coming from much deeper. Also, the plasma is much less dense than the Earth’s atmosphere, so no, you can’t walk on the surface of the sun.

But is there a layer that you could walk on? Well, no – the sun is plasma all the way down. But you might be able to swim in it. The sun’s core is more dense than you are, so there’s some point between the photosphere and the core that you would have neutral bouyancy and start to float. I mean, assuming you’re impervious to all the things that would kill you inside the sun. Also, you won’t see anything because you’ll be swimming in extremely dense high-energy plasma that will basically just look like, well, pressing your eyes to the surface of the sun, so pack sunglasses

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