Loops of superheated plasma far larger than the Earth dance across the surface of the Sun. Amazing images captured by the Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft. https://t.co/jpmzlNkqHB pic.twitter.com/6SySxM8eV6
— Wonder of Science (@wonderofscience) September 16, 2019
September 16, 2019
Loops... larger than Earth...
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Wonders of nature actually not of science. The technology used is a wonder of science but not just of science.
When you tone down the radiation, the Sun appears to have surface features. A triumph of optic resolution.
Beautiful photos. Is this size of solar activity unusual? Does this kind of activity tend to make the earth hotter or colder?
So how many years of climate change mitigation just went down the drain?
I have to assume that angels and other immortal types probably surf these kinds of solar loops and stuff.... hey, if you cannot die, why not, right? Much more gnarly a wave than off of Waikiki.
These kinds of things are a regular for the sun, as I recall. It frequently shoots out these flares of gas that are larger than the earth and all the other planets. We really cannot comprehend how much bigger the sun is compared to the planets; even Jupiter.
As far as climate change is concerned... the Sun could, if it felt like it, destroy all living things on the earth any time it wants. It could end civilization with a sufficiently large solar flare aimed at the earth, destroying all electronics. And I don't think there is any mitigation possible for something like that, other than turning off your electronics and hoping for the best.
But since Al Gore cannot tax the sun, he ignores it and tries to tax us instead. So he can live large off our hard work. It's called "slavery" in other contexts.
Solar prominences, https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/what-is-a-solar-prominence as those loops are called, are an ongoing feature of the Sun. Sometimes there are more of them than others. No one really knows why.
It is a beautiful video. Solar physics is quite extreme: the star exists in an equilibrium between gravitation and radiation pressure (yep, light has momentum and exerts a force when it encounters matter), moving ionized particles create huge magnetic fields, etc. It is safe to assume that we will never observe the interior of any star directly, but what goes on at the surface is bizarre and complicated enough.
Small, aren't we?
That's why you want to land at night.
rhhardin: And for sure, wear sunblock, just in case.
Somehow, this will be spun into the global warming narrative.
"Did you see the size of those flares relative to the Earth?? We are DOOMED!!"
When you tone down the radiation, the Sun appears to have surface features.
So do nuclear fireballs, which are hotter than the surface of the sun.
There was a rich man whose land produced a bountiful harvest. He asked himself, ‘What shall I do, for I do not have space to store my harvest?’ And he said, ‘This is what I shall do: I shall tear down my barns and build larger ones. There I shall store all my grain and other goods and I shall say to myself, “Now as for you, you have so many good things stored up for many years, rest, eat, drink, be merry!”’ But God said to him, ‘You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you; and the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?’
Would it kill them to put time stamps on the imagery?
@Fernandistein: Check out some the nuclear fireballs in the middle this video. "White Zombie" soundtrack is pretty cool; I like how the sound explodes when the underground test heaves the earth upwards towards the end.
Check out some the nuclear fireballs in the middle this video.
I like those bombs. My Dad contributed to this book, "The Effects of Nuclear Weapons", and I had the circular blast effects "computer" to make up numbers which (I thought) corresponded to the pictures of blown-up stuff.
Amazing images captured by the Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft at a place on the sun locals call Picnic Point.
"Dance" sounds so serene and calm. But those contain the most violent explosions man has ever had a chance to gaze upon.
That must be time lapse. Anyone know how many times speed?
We recently visited the Kitts Observatory in AZ. It was a Come-to-Jesus moment.
It gives me a sense of perspective in two ways:
!. We are a microcosm of the universe;
2. There are incredibly dedicated smart scientists out there trying to figure things out.
Molly: "Does this kind of activity tend to make the earth hotter or colder?"
The less of this sort of thing, the colder the earth gets.
The solar system is constantly being bombarded by particles coming from our galaxy around us, and meanwhile the sun is emitting great sheets of particles coming primarily from eruptions much like that in the video. For reasons I don't understand, but it probably has something to do with the collective magnetic field the particles carry, the particles coming from galaxy and the particles coming from the sun act like two competing fluids, and there is a line, or a surface between the two.
By some coincidence the sun's atmosphere, or what by some definitions is an atmosphere, is very close to the earth so that when the sun is less active, that is has few eruptions like this, the earth is outside that boundary and when the sun is more active the earth is inside the boundary.
Now I'm also confused about what is the nature of this boundary because there is a more another boundary between the sun's influence and the galactic influence that is called the heliopause. But that is much further out, well beyond Pluto.
But as I said I think the boundary I'm talking about here is the Sun's atmosphere. Mercury and Venus are always inside that atmosphere, and the Earth sometimes is and sometimes isn't.
When the Earth is inside the Sun's atmosphere it tends to get hotter. But not because that atmosphere carries any significant heat. The reason for the temperature difference is because when we are outside, more cosmic rays reach us from the galaxy, and more cosmic rays means more clouds, which has the effect of cooling down the temperature on the surface of the earth.
Currently I believe we are outside the Sun's atmosphere.
If you want to keep up with how this stuff affects the Earth https://www.spaceweather.com/
Also from spaceweather.com, the sunspots are in steep decline. Maunder minimum may be on the way.
When cosmic rays not being blocked by solar storms, they create more clouds shading the Pacific Ocean. That's all there is to warming and cooling of the atmosphere folks.
NB: we are three years into a cooling cycle. And it's cooling, not Fake Warming, that causes changes to weather patterns.
Mandrewa: Thanks for the explanation. When I read this stuff, I always think: Après moi, le déluge.
I'M with MadisonMan and Wince. If that's real time, the speed of those plumes is even more impressive than their size.
Speed (tweeter->link->wiki): "SDO collected one frame every 12 seconds so each second in this video corresponds to 6 minutes of real time."
360 times faster than real-time.
Just a note in response to Phidippus's 6:12 PM comment:
The interior of the Sun has already been directly observed -- albeit at very low resolution. Neutrino's generated in the solar interior have been measured for decades. The 2002 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded for these detections and the understanding that the reason the detected rate was only 1 third the expected rate was due to oscillations among the varieties of neutrinos -- one of the most surprising discoveries in fundamental physics in the past half century. Light is not the only means astronomers have to look at objects in the sky.
Tom McGlynn: I forgot about the neutrinos! Thanks.
Hard to make images with them, though.
Wikipedia's article on solar neutrinos suggests that future generations of neutrino detectors will have sufficient spatial resolution to resolve the solar interior. So hard, but not impossible.
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