Three scientists who experimentally probed the blurry realm of the electron have been awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in physics. The scientists, hailing from the United States, Germany and Sweden, used extraordinarily short pulses of light to track the way electrons move in atoms and create the chemical bonds necessary for the formation of molecules.
Ask Dr. Universe: Why do we need the sun?
jstewardRight now, the sun is shining through my window. It feels warm on my muzzle.
I talked about the sun with Guy Worthey. He’s a professor of astronomy and physics at Washington State University.
He told me that our lives depend on the sun.
“The sun keeps you warm and powers everything,” Worthey said. “Without it, Earth would be a frozen nightmare.”
The sun is a yellow dwarf star. It’s made of super-hot gases. Since it isn’t solid, the part of the sun we call the surface is really its inner atmosphere—called the photosphere. If you could stick a thermometer into the photosphere, it would read 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit. But the sun’s outer atmosphere—called the corona—reaches a whopping 3.5 million degrees.
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