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Tsunami Spotted on the Surface of the Sun

Posted by samzenpus on from the mother-of-all-disaster-movies dept.

BigBadBus writes "The BBC is reporting that NASA's twin spacecraft designed to obtain stereo images of the Sun have recorded a Solar Tsunami. The feature includes a fascinating movie of the images captured."

3 of 164 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Special Effects by palndrumm · · Score: 4, Informative

    I always ask myself a question whenever I read or hear that line: what surface? Where the heck do you define the "surface" in the case of a star? Obligatory Wikipedia Reference:

    "The visible surface of the Sun, the photosphere, is the layer below which the Sun becomes opaque to visible light."

    So there you go. Not something I'd ever really thought about either to be honest, but I guess someone at some point has.
  2. Re:And yet... by pclminion · · Score: 4, Informative

    I assume you are referring to the Asian tsunami. The problem wasn't that we couldn't find it in time, but that the warning systems were not in place to alert people once this information was known. This is not a breakdown of science, but of government.

  3. Re:Special Effects by pclminion · · Score: 4, Informative

    Photons which are generated at the core of the sun, where fusion is occurring, can take tens or hundreds of millions of years to reach the surface (and by that time, they have been thermally absorbed and re-emitted so many times it's hard to even call them the same photons). It might be a big ball of gas, but star matter is also one of the most opaque substances commonly occurring in the universe, due to the enormous density.