Above the Clouds

If blue skies, spring flowers, and a warm breeze put a song in your heart this week, you’re not alone:

The sun is singing, too.

Jeanna Bryner, a staff writer for space.com, writes that “astronomers have recorded heavenly music bellowed out by the Sun’s atmosphere.” (And we thought it could only shine!)

Hmmm... shades of Job 38:7, when God queries Job, “Where were you at the creation of the world, while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?” Or Psalm 19:1-2, “The heavens declare the glory of God... Day after day they pour forth speech.” Or Isaiah 44:23, “Sing for joy, O heavens, for the Lord has done this”...

At the University of Sheffield’s Solar Physics and Space Plasma Research Center, scientists Robertus von Fay-Siebenburgen and colleagues made the discovery. Explosive events on the sun’s surface appear to trigger sound waves that bounce back and forth between the Sun’s looping magnetic fields, a phenomenon known as a standing wave – similar to a simple guitar string. “These energies are plucking these magnetic strings...which set up standing waves – exactly the same waves you see on a guitar string,” says von-Fay-Siebenburgen.

But don’t pull your lawn chair out into the back yard just yet. The frequency of the sound waves is well below the human hearing threshold. We won’t likely catch any heavenly performances in this life!

It’s said, though, that just in our own Milky Way system there are billions of suns such as ours. Billions of singing stars? It appears that the music of heaven just might be backed up by a much larger orchestra than we realized! I’m sure the Creator has them each tuned in perfect harmony, and the music is out of this world. And I wonder if He might have composed a special background score for the Rapture?

I also wonder if the scientists might like to go on to investigate the rest of Isaiah’s speech... “Shout aloud, O earth beneath. Burst into song, you mountains, you forests and all your trees.”

For all we’ve yet to discover, this just might be a gloriously melodious world. As the Bible says, he who has ears to hear, let him hear. Right now, we don’t – but we can fully expect to some day.

In the meantime, remember that above the clouds, the sun is still singing!