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 and was always attracted to the magnetic personality of the Sun. She is a faculty member at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics in Bangalore. Murthy is an experimentalist trained in condensed matter physics and works at the Azim Premji University as an educator. Both Piyali and Murthy obtained their Ph.Ds 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: https://www.nature.com/articles/s4156...

Piyali's scientific talk on this work :    • The Solar Spicule Forest and Parallel...  

Brief popular video about the work :    • Of solar spicules, Slo-mo paint jets,...  

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 🙂

Related content:

1) https://www.nature.com/articles/d4415...

2) https://azimpremjiuniversity.edu.in/h...

Additional notes and useful links related to some of the discussion points:

Solar flares :    • How Solar Flares Form | How the Unive...  

Paint on a speaker :    • Paint on a Speaker at 2500fps - The S...  

Cornstarch on speaker:    • Cornstarch And Water On A Speaker (UV)  

Alligator mating rituals :    • Alligators Showing Off for Mating Sea...  

Making plasma at home :    • How To Make Plasma At Home  

Aditya L1 mission :    • Launch of PSLV-C57/Aditya-L1 Mission ...  

Cinematography:
Vikrant Anand
Prasad MD

Editing:
Neppolian Pandian
Ankit Mangal

Thumbnail Credits:
Sindhu Kulkarni
https://www.tacit.in