NASA Discovers "Tsunami" On The Sun
NASA’s Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory has confirmed that the crazy circular bursts on the surface of the sun, increasing higher than the Earth is wide, aren’t just optical illusions.
STEREO consists of two spacecraft pointing at the sun, one in front of Earth in its orbit and one behind, that acquire stereoscopic images of the sun to provide a sort of three-dimensional view, similar to the way our two eyes do.
Though these solar tsunamis, technically recognized as fast-mode magnetohydrodynamical waves, were first seen by the SOHO mission more than a decade ago, the single spacecraft couldn’t make a decision if the wave was real or the shadow of a coronal mass ejection. But in February the STEREO twins were absolutely poised to catch the eruption of a sunspot that spawned a wave, seen in the movie above.
“It was absolutely a wave,” George Mason University scientist Spiros Patsourakos, lead author of a paper on the solar tsunamis in August in The Astrophysical Research Journal Letters, said in a press release. “Not a wave of water,” he adds, “but a giant wave of hot plasma and magnetism.” The spacecraft have also spotted waves crashing into other solar structures.
“We’ve seen the waves reflected by coronal holes. And there is a wonderful movie (at right) of a solar fame oscillating after it gets hit by a wave (near the top of the image),” co-author Angelos Vourdilas of the Naval Research Lab in Washington, D.C., said in a press release. “We name it a dancing prominence.”
Watching the waves interact with other things can reveal innovative information about the sun’s atmosphere, and assist forecast when a coronal mass ejection or radiation storm will impact Earth.
Posted by CuttsMatt
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10:35 PM
3 comments:
Hi friends,
So Tsunami have attacked that mass sun even then how about the situation of the humans then...its riduculous only...this Tsunami over sun video was excellent and i enjoyed and hope for many more interesting things from this blog...
Thanks
Pradi
Nice to see your video friend.. Keep doing this good job innovatively....
Hey nice msg.... video is v lively and gives clear view... doing good job ya...
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