Friendship with Science| Hairy Sun: Piyali Chatterjee, Murthy, Shashi Thutupalli & Biswa Kalyan Rath

Friendship with Science is a series of fun conversations with a range of scientists in India about science that is done here but is, of course, relevant universally, as all good science always is! The conversations cover fundamental and broad ideas in science - they range from atoms to genes, they will go as far out as the sun and come as close to home as making science toys with everyday objects. The conversations flow across traditional disciplinary boundaries - they are about physics but also biology. They may start in chemistry but meander through mathematics. They are about how science is done and how scientists think. What excites them? How do they work? Are they really machines that turn coffee into theorems and laws? In short, this series is an invitation to make friendship with science and scientists in a lighthearted way, with a dash of humour along the way!
Piyali Chatterjee is a solar physicist who was always attracted to the sun's magnetic personality. She is a faculty member at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics in Bangalore. Murthy is an experimentalist trained in condensed matter physics and works as an educator at Azim Premji University. Both Piyali and Murthy obtained their PhDs at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore.
Sparked by an 8-year-old’s remark and armed with a basic slo-mo camera, paint on a bass speaker, and a state-of-the-art magnetohydrodynamics code, the couple discovered an intriguing connection between solar plasma dynamics and polymeric fluids along with Piyali’s PhD student, Sahel Dey. This conversation follows their fascinating story during the COVID-19 lockdowns and recently published work (in the journal Nature Physics) providing a refreshing insight into the generation of the solar spicule forest (“solar hairs”) on the sun’s surface.
Taking the conversation up with Piyali and Murthy are Shashi Thutupalli, who may or may not be a scientist and Biswa Kalyan Rath, who is definitely not a comedian!
Link to the original research paper: www.nature.com/articles/s4156...
Piyali’s scientific talk on this work: • The Solar Spicule Fore...
Brief popular video about the work: • Of solar spicules, Slo...
Related content:
1) www.nature.com/articles/d4415...
2) azimpremjiuniversity.edu.in/h...
Additional notes and useful links related to some of the discussion points:
22:50 Bulk plasma generally is neutral, so opposite charges also must be there. Nitrogen and oxygen molecular ions exist in our own ionospheric plasma. The molecules dissociate into individual atomic ions upon heating to very high temperatures.
39:11 Faraday did the experiments on both liquids and granular material. And what is known as Faraday waves today are liquid surface waves.
52:25 There are many kinds of polymer models including the so-called “Oldroyd B” model at high polymer concentrations especially, that was used in this work. Piyali, Murthy and colleagues were initially not sure if this “Oldroyd B” was indeed the right one to use when the analogy could be explored in other ways.
Solar flares: www.youtube.com/watch?v=dT pZo8BDeUab channel=ScienceChannel
Paint on a speaker: www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WKU7gG ApUab channel=TheSlowMoGuys
Cornstarch on speaker: • Cornstarch And Water O...
Alligator mating rituals: • Alligators Showing Off... ab channel=BBCEarth
Making plasma at home: • How To Make Plasma At ... ab channel=Jukebooth
Aditya L1 mission : www.youtube.com/watch?v= IcgGYZTXQwab channel=ISROOfficial
Cinematography:
Vikrant Anand
Prasad MD
Editing:
Neppolian Pandian
Ankit Mangal
Thumbnail Credits:
Sindhu Kulkarni
www.tacit.in
Chapters:
01:56 Introductions
02:53 The Sun, space weather and solar flares
09:47 Solar interior and solar cycle
16:34 Semiconductor, plasma TV and solar plasma
24:20 Spicules
29:44 Don’t look directly at the sun
30:52 Aditya L1
31:15 Analyzing pop-science videos to study spicules
37:43 Paint-on-speaker setup
38:48 Faraday waves
41:25 What’s in that paint can?
43:58 Polymeric jets polarize light
47:46 Connection between plasma simulations, polymeric fluids
50:20 A forest of jets
55:42 Corn starch vs paint on bass speakers
57:27 What’s that got to do with mating alligators?
1:01:13 Magnetic anisotropy on the sun
1:03:30 Four ingredients (Beer purity law) for fluid jets
1:06:23 Polymer jets dancing to solar music
1:08:40 List of possible Ph.D problems :)
Past Episodes
Episode 1: Atoms with Prof Sridhar K -- • Friendship with Scienc...
Episode 2: Toys : Arvind Gupta -- • Friendship with Scienc...
Episode 3: Tigers : Uma Ramakrishnan -- • Friendship with Scienc...
Episode 4: Atoms 2 with Prof Sridhar K -- • Friendship with Scienc...

[@mahbus96]

I have just fallen in love with this series. Especially the atom episodes and this one. And another talk video on quantum Framework.

[@space-time-somdeep]

❤

[@MCube-yo8hs]

Great to see another episode in this exciting series!

[@rajrajeshwarirt9546]

Would have been great if they could translate the technical training into simpler/ layman concepts! Focussing on the “why” instead of “how”/“what”!

[@mohitpunasiya]

Request to bring someone doing climate research, science of climate change

[@shahrozalam8623]

Gd evening all of you ❤️

[@creativehistory3989]

बढ़िया