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Giant solar waves spew more energy than 10 bn atom bombs
The Times of India ^ | 21 Mar 2009, 1634 hrs IST, IANS

Posted on 03/21/2009 7:52:51 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach

LONDON: Scientists have detected vast turbulent waves in the sun's lower atmosphere that at a time spew the energy equivalent of 10 billion nuclear warheads.

Queen's University Belfast (QUB) scientists with researchers from the Universities

of Sheffield and California State, have shed some light on why the corona, the region around the sun, has a much higher temperature than its surface - something of a puzzle to scientists.

Their discovery has revealed the existence of a new breed of solar waves, called the Alfven wave, known to transport energy into the corona.

The surface of the sun, known as the photosphere, can reach temperatures of 5,000 degrees Celsius. But the corona has been shown to reach temperatures of over a million degrees Celsius.

The waves have been named after Hannes Alfven who in 1942 received a Nobel Prize for his work in the area.

He theorised the existence of these waves but no hard evidence ever surfaced, until recently, when Mihalis Mathioudakis, a professor and David Jess, both of QUB, made the discovery using the Swedish Solar Telescope in the Canary Islands.

Mathioudakis, leader of the Queen's University Solar Group, said "The solar corona, visible from earth only during a total solar

eclipse, is a very dynamic environment which can erupt suddenly, releasing more energy than 10 billion atomic bombs.

"Our study makes a major advancement in the understanding of how the million-degree corona manages to achieve this feat."

David Jess, from QUB and lead author of the paper said: "Often, waves can be visualised by the rippling of water when a stone is dropped into a pond, or by the motions of a guitar string when plucked," according to a QUB release.

"Alfven waves though cannot be seen so easily. In fact, they are completely invisible to the naked eye. Only by examining the motions of structures and their corresponding velocities in the Sun's turbulent atmosphere could we find, for the first time, the presence of these elusive Alfven waves."

Click here to comment on this story.


TOPICS: Astronomy; Science
KEYWORDS: alfvenwaves; alfvnwaves; astronomy; catastrophism; corona; physics; sol; solar; sun
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To: Fred Nerks
Absolutely fascinating....read as far as Evidence Says Arp is Right - A Quasar In Front of a Nearby Galaxy

If the Red shift is wrong...most astronomers heads will explode....

61 posted on 03/21/2009 11:47:50 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach (What happened to my IRAs)
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To: All
Totally off Topic...but worth seeing...from HardOCP:

.50 BMG API Vs. 18 Hard Drives

Hard Drive Death by .50 BMG Favorite

62 posted on 03/21/2009 11:58:45 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach (What happened to my IRAs)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach

Oct 01, 2004 Quasar in Front of Galaxy

October 3, 2003: the big bang was proved wrong. Again. And here is the proof (image above). The galaxy, NGC 7319, is a Seyfert 2, which means it is a galaxy shrouded with such heavy dust clouds that they obscure most of the bright, active nucleus that defines a normal Seyfert galaxy. This galaxy has a redshift of 0.0225. The tiny white spot is a quasar either silhouetted in front of the opaque gas clouds or embedded in the topmost layers of the dust. The redshift of the quasar is 2.114.

Why does this prove the big bang wrong? One of the two major foundations of the big bang is that redshift is proportional to distance. That means the larger the redshift of an object, the farther away it must be. The other major foundation of the big bang is that all redshift is a measure of velocity. Again, the larger the redshift of an object, the faster it is moving away from us. Combined, these two foundations become the expanding universe, which can be traced backwards to the big bang.

Look at the picture again. By the big bang principles, this quasar must be billions of light years farther from us than the galaxy, because its redshift is so much larger. And yet the galaxy is opaque, so the quasar must be near the surface of the dust clouds or even in front of them.


63 posted on 03/22/2009 1:24:24 AM PDT by Fred Nerks (fair dinkum!)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach

bump


64 posted on 03/22/2009 1:29:48 AM PDT by Captain Beyond (The Hammer of the gods! (Just a cool line from a Led Zep song))
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To: Swordmaker

You put waaay too much work into that one.

;)


65 posted on 03/22/2009 6:33:26 AM PDT by patton (If Hawai'i seccedes, is Barack Obama still an illegal alien?)
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To: Swordmaker
"Tsar Bomba" would be bad grammer for Russians unless the Russian who coined the term simply didn't care about grammer. More likely would be "Tsar Bomb" ( Царь Бомб ) or emperor of all bombs; Bomba is feminine in Russian, you take the trailing 'a' off for genitive plural... Russians actually stay aware of stuff like that after they're grown up and out of school....
66 posted on 03/22/2009 6:35:39 AM PDT by wendy1946
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To: Fred Nerks; All; SunkenCiv; blam; NormsRevenge; Grampa Dave; SierraWasp; Marine_Uncle; ...
For the Lurkers:

Pinging others....see post #63.

Then mediate on this.....

What if our understanding of the heavens based on the Red Shift....is WRONG...??


67 posted on 03/22/2009 9:42:33 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach (What happened to my IRAs)
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To: patton
You put waaay too much work into that one.

;^)>

Nah, just looking up the BTUs of a kilo ton and then counting a lot of zeros... my calculator handled the rest.

68 posted on 03/22/2009 12:03:49 PM PDT by Swordmaker (Remember, the proper pronunciation of IE is "AAAAIIIIIEEEEEEE!)
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To: patton; Swordmaker; Fred Nerks
Just started this thread:

Seeing Red: Intrinsic redshifts, stable universe

69 posted on 03/22/2009 12:14:31 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach (What happened to my IRAs)
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To: wendy1946
"Tsar Bomba" would be bad grammer for Russians unless the Russian who coined the term simply didn't care about grammer. More likely would be "Tsar Bomb" ( Царь Бомб ) or emperor of all bombs; Bomba is feminine in Russian, you take the trailing 'a' off for genitive plural... Russians actually stay aware of stuff like that after they're grown up and out of school....

It's been 40 years since I took two years of Russian in college... thanks for the remedial lessons. You are right. However that is what it was called in the west. Perhaps it is more a bad translation by English journalists? It appears the Russians referred to it as "Big Ivan."

70 posted on 03/22/2009 12:36:37 PM PDT by Swordmaker (Remember, the proper pronunciation of IE is "AAAAIIIIIEEEEEEE!)
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To: Fred Nerks; Ernest_at_the_Beach

Thanks Ernest.


71 posted on 03/22/2009 4:13:57 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/____________________ Profile updated Monday, January 12, 2009)
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To: Swordmaker; Ernest_at_the_Beach
21,811,167,572,640,000,000,000,000 BTUs

Wow...
that must be approaching the National Debt!

I propose that BTU must be somehow connected with "Barcak Teleprompter Units'.

Cheers!

72 posted on 03/22/2009 5:02:10 PM PDT by grey_whiskers (The opinions are solely those of the author and are subject to change without notice.)
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To: Swordmaker; Ernest_at_the_Beach
21,811,167,572,640,000,000,000,000 BTUs

Wow...
that must be approaching the National Debt!

I propose that BTU must be somehow connected with "Barack Teleprompter Units'.

Cheers!

73 posted on 03/22/2009 5:02:19 PM PDT by grey_whiskers (The opinions are solely those of the author and are subject to change without notice.)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach

And that question has been around for a long time regarding the absolute validity of the red shift.


74 posted on 03/23/2009 6:59:24 AM PDT by Marine_Uncle (I still believe Duncan Hunter would have been the best solution... during this interim in time....)
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