Have you ever wondered why stars “wink”? The explanation is curious

For years now, humanity has simply been obsessed with the stars and their mysteries. For proof, just look at how much cultural elements point to these stars. We have, for example, movie “stars,” streamers, and mega-franchises like “Star Wars” and “Star Trek,” among many other allusions.

Humanity’s obsession with the stars is not superfluous, after all, life on our planet is possible only thanks to the sun. However, as many know, the Sun, although it makes up 99.8% of the mass of our solar system, is still a small star compared to other, less well-known stars.

This is because, in the universe, it is possible to find stars with a mass more than a thousand times that of our sun. Yet even in the midst of all this remoteness, a question has always intrigued humans: Why do stars “flicker”?

Uncover the real reason behind the stars’ blinking

As we said, humanity has always wanted to reach the most remote stars of our planet and discover the mysteries that hide them. Something that has always intrigued people is that when we look at the night sky, we notice that the stars are “flashing” or “flashing”.

At this point, many people already know that stars are balls of plasma that have absurdly high temperatures. Because of this high temperature, it is able to fuse elements, more specifically melting their molecules. This process releases an infinite amount of energy, which ends up heating the star.

However, this energy is emitted in the form of radiation, and thus is released into space by the surface of the star. For those who don’t know, the light we see is radiation known as the visible spectrum. But, after all this, why all this explanation just to say why the stars shine?

The problem is that this radiation they emit is not only in the visible spectrum, but in the entire radiation field, which contains: gamma rays, x-rays, ultraviolet rays, infrared rays, microwaves …

And since our planet is specially prepared to protect us, these other radiation waves are filtered through the layers of the atmosphere. Therefore, we receive only the “weakest” radiation from the field. This filter works perfectly to allow the sun’s radiation to warm our planet, enabling life.

As for other stars far from our planet, when they reach the Earth, the radiation waves are already more scattered. So, as you penetrate the atmosphere, refraction sometimes ends up generating points where the star’s light is “off.”

In this way, the observer would have the impression that the star’s light was blinking, but in reality it was only a part of its light (radiation) that was reflected by the atmosphere.