Lemmy.org - News

This says the closest we've gotten so far is 4.51million miles away.

Given the highest melting point of any material we have use of right now is at least 1500°C below the surface temperature of the Sun, I do wonder how close we'll be able to get equipment to the surface. 3.8 million miles is about 0.04AU, which - on an astronomical scale - is nothing.

Edit: I think I worked out a scale.

Reducing the size of the probe down to approximately the width of a human hair, you'd have to launch that tiny spec eastbound from Vancouver to Phnom Penh and get within 5km of the city.

Stars don't have a solid core or a defined "surface". They have more in common with Jupiter than Earth.

Where is the "surface" of jupiter? There is no solid ground to define as "the surface." The entire planet is just a mega atmosphere, so once you are within the atmosphere, you are within the planet.

From very far away, we can clearly define "This pixel is jupiter, this other pixel is not"... but when you're up close there isn't such a clear separation. It doesn't go from "Here there are 100% gas particles, and suddenly there are 0%" Just like Earth's atmosphere. It doesn't just suddenly go to 0 oxygen, and there have been plenty of debates about what counts as "outer space"

While I would agree with you that "landing" is a dumb word, because there is no ground to "land on." The probe isn't going to come to rest on a surface. But at the same time, for a "simplest explanation" case, its close enough. They are crossing the boundary into "inside" the sun (which again, is not the same thing as "inside the earth", because rocky vs gas/plasma)