At last, chapter 4 has arrived!

The usual disclaimers still apply (as they should): I don't own Magic School Bus. All rights belong to Scholastic, Inc.


Around the Sun


You know that level in Super Mario Bros. 3 where the Sun tries to kill you? Well, that's not exactly how being up close to the Sun was, but it reminded me of that all-too-famous part of the game for some reason. Perhaps it was because I thought I was going to go blind from the sheer brightness of the light that was shining into my face. Thank goodness the windows had already been tinted. But even then, the light from the Sun shone red through my closed eyelids and made me long for glasses with Transitions lenses. But Ms. Frizzle had better ideas.

"Class? Are you all wearing your special heavy-duty Sunblock Eight-Thousand Sun Goggles?"

Special heavy-duty what? I thought. My confusion lasted for a few moments before I realized there was a pair of rather stylish sunglasses hanging from the back of the seat in front of me. Without giving it a second thought, I grabbed the glasses and placed them on my head. The glasses themselves, it seemed, were nothing more than shades that people back on Earth use to safely view solar eclipses, but with the added perk of having a sleek designer look worn only by those who likely had no problem paying hundreds of dollars for a pair of sunglasses. Nevertheless, I was grateful that the intense glare from the Sun that had nearly blinded me had all but disappeared. Instead, the glasses gave me a view like none that could have ever imagined.

"Look how huge it is!" I heard Tim shout from the front of the bus.

"Take a look, class!" Ms. Frizzle. "This is the Sun in all its mesmerizing splendor! Our light, our lives, and everything we do back on Earth is controlled by and depends on it. It's no wonder that ancient peoples revered it as a god. To the Greeks, it was the god Helios, riding his golden chariot across the sky. And to the Egyptians, it was the god Ra, reborn every day at the coming of dawn."

"Wow!" I heard Carlos say. "They were sure on to something, weren't they?"

"Indeed." Ms. Frizzle replied. "But not until now have we come to realize just how awesome the Sun truly is. It's by far the biggest, brightest, and hottest object in our Solar System. Its gravity is what keeps the planets, asteroids, and comets in their orbits around it. And it's so massive – about ninety-nine-point nine percent of all the matter in our Solar System is contained here!"

"I wonder how many Earths would fit in the Sun…" Keesha said.

"Over a million." Ms. Frizzle replied. "Hold on to your goggles! We're going in for a closer look!"

"This is incredible!" Phoebe said.

Incredible as it was, it was also frightening. Being so close to a star could surely have detrimental effects if one gets too close without proper protection. Nevertheless, I couldn't keep my protected eyes away from the unbelievable sights. The whole surface of the Sun, being a bright yellow through my efficient light-filtering shades, seemed to bubble and erupt like a never-ending explosion. Giant loops of plasma and superheated gas stretched far out into space, twisting and bending into strange abstract shapes that seemed to flow outwards into space like a giant tsunami, and then fall back onto the glowing surface like giant feathers. I could only pray that the bus wouldn't be subject to getting engulfed by a large wall of superheated plasma, the very thought making me wish I stayed home that day (among other things, of course). I squinted, making out dark spots on its surface. Even though they appeared dark through my sun goggles, I could only imagine that they must have been at least ten times brighter than the full Moon. Even with the bus's incredible heat shield, I could feel sweat develop on my forehead. The heat being emanated from the Sun was phenomenal.

"Ms. Frizzle?" I asked.

"Yes, Arnold?"

"How hot is the Sun?"

"Well, Arnold it depends on which part of the Sun you measure its temperature. The surface of the Sun is usually around ten-thousand degrees Fahrenheit. I say usually, because it can vary. See those dark spots on the surface?"

"Yes."

"Those are called sunspots. They're giant magnetic storms that erupt on the Sun's surface and are darker and cooler than the rest of the Sun. They're as large as several Earths and are usually around seven thousand degrees Fahrenheit. But at the center of the Sun, the temperature can reach as high as twenty-seven million degrees Fahrenheit! This is due to the immense pressure generated by the Sun's enormous gravity, which is almost twenty-eight times greater than Earth's. This, combined with its staggering mass, produces the enormous heat, which is enough to compress hydrogen atoms together into larger helium atoms. With each of these atomic collisions, some mass is lost in the form of light energy. This is called nuclear fusion, and it's the very reason why the Sun, and every other star in the universe, shines."

"So, let me get this straight." Ralphie said. "The Sun is being powered by nuclear fusion. Hydrogen is being fused into helium, the same gas that they use in balloons back on Earth?"

"Yes, exactly." Ms. Frizzle said. "In fact, helium was discovered on the Sun before it was ever found on Earth."

"How is that even possible if no one has ever been to the Sun?" Wanda asked.

"I'm glad you asked, Wanda! The discovery of helium was made by a process called spectroscopy. Spectroscopy is basically a fancy term for determining an object's chemical composition from the light or reflected light it generated. Light is first split into colors using a prism. Certain elements leave different patterns of light and dark lines in the spectrum, which means that by looking at these patterns, one can deduce a planet's or star's chemical makeup. For the Sun, when we look at its spectrum, we can tell that it is made primarily of hydrogen, about ninety-two percent. The rest is mainly helium, with small amounts of other elements and compounds."

"So, going back to nuclear fusion," Phoebe said, "how much energy is produced in the Sun?"

"Whoa! Great question, Phoebe!" Ms. Frizzle said. "Believe it or not, about six hundred million tons of hydrogen are fused into helium and every second, converting four million tons of matter into energy as a result. In Watts, this would translate to about thirty-eight thousand four-hundred-sixty septillion Watts every second!"

"How big is that?" Phoebe asked.

"It is unimaginably big. Let's talk numbers for a second. You know about large numbers like a hundred, a thousand, a million, and a billion. Well beyond the billions is the trillions, and then after that is quadrillions. Then we have quintillions followed by sextillions and then finally septillions. Nothing within our daily lives can allow us to comprehend such large numbers…"

"I'll say." Carlos replied. "I'd hate to be the person that pays the Sun's power bill…"

"What do you know about paying power bills, Carlos?" D.A. asked in a laughing tone.

"Nothing. I just know that there's no way anyone could use that much power in one second."

"I doubt even all of the power used back on Earth in one year doesn't even come close to how much the Sun uses in one second." I heard Janet say with utter confidence. "Would that be right, Ms. Frizzle?"

"That's right, Janet. As a matter of fact, the amount of energy being produced per second in the Sun's core is equivalent to about ninety-two billion megatons of TNT!"

Now that was a scary thought. It's amazing how facts like that can stick in one's mind after so many years. Looking back on it now in my adulthood, it seems even more scary when comparing it to the Tsar Bomba, the most powerful thermonuclear bomb ever built by Man. One would need about 1,820,000,000 Tsar Bombas to match the total energy production at the Sun's core in one second. That is insane. It seemed that my initial impression of the Sun being a giant seemingly never-ending explosion was right after all. Surely that kind of energy production can't be sustainable. Can it?

"It's been doing that for at least four and a half billion years." Ms. Frizzle went on. "And it's likely it will continue to do so for at least another five billion years."

Dang…How wrong I was.

"And, according to my research, the light energy produced in the Sun's core can take anywhere from ten thousand to one-hundred-seventy thousand years to make its way to the Sun's surface due to the enormous pressures exerted by the its outer layers." D.A. read from one of her many books. "It says here that once light leaves the Sun's surface, it takes only about eight minutes to travel the ninety-three-million-mile distance to Earth. This means that the light reaching the Earth today was produced when wooly mammoths were still present on its surface during the last ice age!"

"Wow! So, when one says they're going outside to get some fresh air," Carlos said, "is it also correct that they can say that they're getting stale sunlight?"

Ms. Frizzle and everyone else onboard laughed at Carlos' remark. Even D.A. managed a chuckle, despite her trying to be serious.

"Yes, Carlos…" she said.

Always leave it to Carlos to make a silly joke.

"Well, class. I think we should carry on to our next destination." the Friz said. "There's still a lot more to see on this grand tour of the Solar System!"

"So, we've already travelled almost ninety-three million miles from where we started?" Tim asked.

"That's right Tim."

"At my old school, we learned that light was the fastest thing in the Universe." Phoebe asked. "How were we able to get here so fast?"

"When you have a magic bus, anything is possible!" Ms. Frizzle replied with a smile. "Strap yourselves in, class! We're about to shoot ourselves around the Sun!"

"Wait, wha…?"

But before I could complete my sentence, everyone else was already floating back to their seats just as the bus started to gain momentum once more. I was lucky enough to find an unoccupied window seat and strapped myself in while ensuring that my SPF 8000 whatever-they-were-called sun goggles were firmly attached to my head. The bus was once again travelling at unimaginable speeds, and I watched as the Sun began to move before me. But suddenly, just as I thought things were crazy enough already, a bright flash of light down on the Sun's surface caught my eye. It was spitting out superheated gas and plasma out into space – in our direction. I began to panic as the steady stream of plasma started encroaching on the bus at frightening speed.

"Ms. Frizzle! Watch out!" I shouted.

"Hold on, class!" Ms. Frizzle called out as she yanked the steering wheel and performed a crazy maneuver to avoid the oncoming threat. I felt myself getting forced into my seat as the bus suddenly jerked upward like a fast-moving roller coaster, causing me and everyone else onboard to wince and scream. Miraculously, I was brave enough to keep one eye open long enough to see that we had barely made it out of harm's way, just as the bus settled back into a steady rhythm motion. All of us breathed a collective sigh of relief, knowing that we were safe once again. I was breathing hard, trying to get a grip as my body began soothing me with endorphins to help calm me down. Maybe the Sun was trying to kill us after all…

"What was that?!" Wanda asked.

"Whatever it was, it almost got us!" Ralphie replied.

"That was a solar flare, class." Ms. Frizzle said. "They are sudden temporary outbursts of energy from a small area of the Sun's surface and usually occur when magnetic energy that has built up in the solar atmosphere is suddenly released. If this one was aimed at Earth, it would have disrupted radio communications and possibly cause blackouts worldwide."

"Well, we sure were lucky…" I managed to say.

"That was exciting, Arnold!" Janet said. "Don't tell me you got scared…"

"I wasn't scared!" I said, trying to make myself look brave.

"Sure, cous…"

I said nothing after that. Instead, I refocused my attention out the window. The Sun was beginning to retreat as the bus started to drift away from its blazing surface. Although we were now backing away from it, I kept my sun goggles on to keep from damaging my already slightly-impaired eyesight. Never in my life did I think that getting out of the Sun would such a good thing. Now, all I could think about was where the bus was headed next. As if sensing my inner ponderings, Ms. Frizzle was quick to address them.

"So, class. We've travelled from Earth, around the Sun, and now we're headed towards…"

"Mercury! The closest planet to the Sun!" Janet interrupted.

"Whoa, very good, Janet!" Ms. Frizzle said.

"My class is going to be so jealous!"

Sure enough, the television monitor showed the bus making its way towards a grayish-brown dot locating in the closest and tightest orbit that encircled the Sun. It was Mercury, alright. My excitement became apparent once more, realizing that we'd be on a totally different planet and not just on the Moon. What would we find there?

The only thing I could do was guess.


Hey everyone!

Sorry for the long wait. This chapter ended up being shorter than the other ones and there isn't too much character dynamics going on here, but that will certainly change once the class reaches Mercury. This is merely a transitional chapter.

For every chapter thus far, I've tried to include some interesting facts about each celestial object that the class travels to, most of which were not in the original episode. Space is a subject that I'm really passionate about, so I can't help but go on small tangents about it. At the same time, I try to keep it to a certain level, so as not to take away from the actual story. Let me know what you think!

In the meantime, Arnold and the rest of his class are now about to begin their exploration of the other terrestrial planets. See you then!

saturn95