Telescope Spots Solar Tsunami

scdeimos writes "The prototype of a new solar patrol telescope in New Mexico recorded a tsunami-like shock wave rolling across the visible face of the Sun following a major flare event on Wednesday, Dec. 6. The shock wave, known as a Moreton wave, also destroyed or compressed two filaments of cool gas at opposite sides of the solar hemisphere." From the article: "'These large scale 'blast' waves occur infrequently, however, are very powerful. They quickly propagate in a matter of minutes covering the whole Sun, sweeping away filamentary material,' said Dr. K. S. Balasubramaniam. 'It is unusual to see such powerful waves encompassing the whole sun from ground based observatories. Its significance comes from the fact that these waves are occurring near solar minimum, when intense activity is yet to pick up.'"

Comments

Re:Seriously radical.

[Tuqui]

Did you check the filaments photos?. It looks like the sun is asking something.

Northern lights

[oddeirik]

With this recent sun activity people in the northern regions of the globe should be able to see Northern Lights, probably stronger than the usual flares since the sun is now (almost) at a minimum.
Although I guess it's a bit of bad luck for Discovery and it's crew with the chance of powerful radiation storms...

In Soviet Russia

[WetCat]

Seriously, in Moscow I just experienced short random interruptions in AM broadcasts jiust right now. Moments of silence.
Could it be the result of a solar flare?

I can't believe this.

[idonthack]

Nobody has mentioned yet how fucking awesome this is. I expected you would, with your "seriously radical" subject line, but you didn't.

It's a huge tsunami of terrible nuclear fire. A gigantic shock wave of deadly radioactive plasma. Large enough and forceful enough to sustain itself across the surface of the sun, obliterating the few visible features it has. You're in awe when somebody says "the explosion would be visible from the moon" but this is unfathomably larger. It's immense enough to be an astonishingly big statistical anomaly on an object more than a million times the size of the rock we live on.

This is... like... the coolest thing that ever happened in our solar system.