› View largerThis aurora over Valkeakoski, Finland on September 15, 2000 resulted from the September 12 coronal mass ejection featured in the video above. › Download video Credit: Tom Eklund
Posted on 11/23/2010 10:40:19 AM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
From NASA JPL: Solar flares – they’re big and they’re fast. They can knock out a satellite or create a beautiful aurora. And the jury is still out on what causes these explosions.
Flares, and the related coronal mass ejection, shoot energy, radiation, and magnetic fields out into space that can harm satellites or humans in space. Current observations aren’t precise enough to determine whether the eruptions are driven by energy surging through the sun’s surface, or by the sudden release of energy that has slowly accumulated in the atmosphere.
› View larger
This aurora over Valkeakoski, Finland on September 15, 2000 resulted from the September 12 coronal mass ejection featured in the video above. › Download video Credit: Tom Eklund
Now, a new way of looking at old data has changed all that, but the results have created more mystery: There isn’t enough energy passing through the surface during the eruption to drive the explosion.
“In some sense, the idea that energy from below triggers the eruption is the easiest explanation – like a geyser,” says Peter Schuck, a physicist who studies space weather at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. “But if the idea doesn’t agree with what’s observed, then it’s wrong. End of story.”
Schuck’s research indicates that, instead, the trigger occurs in the sun’s atmosphere. “Our result shows that observations are more consistent with a slow accumulation of energy in the atmosphere,” Schuck said, “and then a sudden explosion triggered from above, more like lightning.”
Schuck studies coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, and solar flares at the place where theory and observation overlap. His latest work on CMEs appeared in the Astrophysical Journal on May 1. Schuck constructed a way to test CME and flare observations in order to limit which group of hypotheses fit the data, even when there’s not enough evidence to conclusively pick a single theory.
In the case of CMEs, the data is limited to distant movies captured by spacecraft such as the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO). These movies show that CMEs begin as a gigantic arch, some 50 times larger than Earth, with each of its feet planted on the sun’s surface, or “photosphere.”
Two broad camps of theories have been developed to explain these so-called coronal loops. “The energy is built up by either a twisting motion below the surface or the release of magnetic energy in the solar atmosphere,” says Haimin Wang, a physicist at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, whose work focuses on the characteristics of the photosphere before and during solar ejections.
Either way, the energy originally comes from the surface. The question is simply whether it surges through directly before the appearance of the coronal loop or oozes up slowly over time, storing up in the atmosphere until released in a massive explosion of light, plasma, magnetic fields and high energy particles.
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Mike Jowsey says:
“But if the idea doesn’t agree with what’s observed, then it’s wrong. End of story.”
Pity those studying terrestrial climate and advocating AGW can’t adopt this maxim.
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R. de Haan says:
Kudos to NASA’s Solar Research that has to make up for it’s retarded climate science and propaganda thus saving some of the former status and integrity of what once was an incredible organization.
Yes.
Bump!
Monster Waves on the Sun are Real
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November 24, 2009: Sometimes you really can believe your eyes. That's what NASA's STEREO (Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory) spacecraft are telling researchers about a controversial phenomenon on the sun known as the "solar tsunami."
Years ago, when solar physicists first witnessed a towering wave of hot plasma racing along the sun's surface, they doubted their senses. The scale of the thing was staggering. It rose up higher than Earth itself and rippled out from a central point in a circular pattern millions of kilometers in circumference. Skeptical observers suggested it might be a shadow of some kind—a trick of the eye—but surely not a real wave.
"Now we know," says Joe Gurman of the Solar Physics Lab at the Goddard Space Flight Center. "Solar tsunamis are real."
The twin STEREO spacecraft confirmed their reality in February 2009 when sunspot 11012 unexpectedly erupted. The blast hurled a billion-ton cloud of gas (a "CME") into space and sent a tsunami racing along the sun's surface. STEREO recorded the wave from two positions separated by 90o, giving researchers an unprecedented view of the event:
Above: A solar tsunami seen by the STEREO spacecraft from orthogonal points of view. The gray part of the animation has been contrast-enhanced by subtracting successive pairs of images, resulting in a "difference movie." [larger movie] [more information]
"It was definitely a wave," says Spiros Patsourakos of George Mason University, lead author of a paper reporting the finding in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. "Not a wave of water," he adds, "but a giant wave of hot plasma and magnetism."
The technical name is "fast-mode magnetohydrodynamical wave"—or "MHD wave" for short. The one STEREO saw reared up about 100,000 km high, and raced outward at 250 km/s (560,000 mph) packing as much energy as 2.4 million megatons of TNT (1029 ergs).
Go to NASA link for much more info and video.
A billion tons per square inch of super heated h2 and a spark...
We don't have a clue, but we are going to get one eventually.
Scroll down to the paragraph, "Stress Relief" for a nice gif or video of a solar eruption in a 6-hour time lapse.
I love that site. It's a good thing primitive Man couldn't see Old Sol like this. They would have believed even more in dragons.
From now on, I promise to use only 1/2 a square of toilet paper. < /crossed fingers >
Article :What is the Sun made of?
Website---www.astronomy.com
You’re a saint. A SAINT!
A word to the wise: if you are going to go all Sheryl Crow on us, never buy Scott tissue. Yeah, you get a thousand sheets, but they’re very, very small and very, very thin and scratchy.
;-p
Profiling?
Isn’t that illegal?
Shouldn’t we be thinking in terms that are less threatening?
Thanks!
Incredible !!!
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For instance: Red Sprites, Blue Jets and Elves
Analogous is a good way to put it. :’) Thanks FGS.
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