


The Sun just tried to punch us

As we've all learned before, the sun is a terrifying beast of energy and magnetic fields that often likes to throw superheated particles, plasma, and many other anti-earth things in our direction.  Well, NASA is hard at work at imaging this gigantic beast, and they managed to capture a doosie of a video.

What you see is a 90 minute time lapse of one of the sun's famed "solar flares."  Essentially, this is what happens when a particular area on the sun undergoes a rapid change in the orientation of its magnetic fields.  As a result, an enormous amount of energy is expelled in the form of a giant arc of plasma.

These solar flares can do all kinds of strange things like mess with telecommunications and the earth's magnetic field.  The really big ones can even have strong effects on the earth's surface, such as  in 1859, when a giant coronal mass ejection resulted in several telegraph poles bursting into flames.

No one is sure what exactly causes these huge fluctuations in activity, although areas of the sun that are generally more active do tend to have a larger number of flares.  One thing is for certain though, they are fascinating, beautiful, and a force to be reckoned with.



What does it take to see the entire Sun?

Well, after thousands of years of speculating, dreaming, and fearing that giant yellow blob in the sky, we are finally able to visualize the sun in its entirety.

Certainly, our knowledge of the sun has grown exponentially over the past century or so, moving from a celestial object of the gods to the giant burning atom smasher that we know and love today.  However, this marks a new step towards being able to use the activity of the sun to make all kinds of predictions about our galaxy.

Of importance for this video is the ability to predict aberrant electromagnetic activity that occurs as a result of the sun's shifting surface.  Generally called "solar flares", these  giant leaping arcs of energy and power have been known to disrupt GPS signals, communication, and other kinds of electronics that rely on wireless fields.

These flares do not completely come out of the blue, we can often anticipate one by looking at activity on the sun's surface.  However, until now, we'd only been able to look at a fraction of the total surface of the sun, meaning that activity on the "dark side of the sun" (kind of a misnomer, I know) was unknown.

Now, by having two circling satellites at opposite ends of our friendly fireball, we can see what's going on all the time, allowing us to more accurately predict solar activity.  Check out the video for more details and pretty pictures!

via NASA

ps, for those who might have noticed a less-frequent number of posts lately, I've been running all over the place getting interviews finished...I promise to take up more slack once things settle down!











via Astronomy Picture of the Day
