Tsunami Spotted on the Surface of the Sun

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."

Comments

Special Effects

[Doc Ruby]

That movie is pretty cool, but only if you use a lot of imagination, which defeats the point of the movie (except for scientists).

I always like movies of the Sun a lot better when they accurately show how gauzy the Sun actually is, because it's really a ball of gas, not as solid as pictures like that show. Some color, and some of the stars beyond shining through, all make these movies of the Sun hanging in space look a lot cooler, and a lot less like peering through a microscope.

Re:Special Effects

[Doc Ruby]

While you're right about the Sun's surface being a largely statistical boundary, and not at some specific radius like on a solid planet (which is also an approximately fractal distance, as your coastline example suggests), and not at all like the oversimplifications often pictured and vaguely described, there is such a thing. It's a chaotic surface, like a stormy sea, but there is a boundary where the Sun's plasma meets the vacuum of space, into which the Sun blasts solar wind (including protons, electron/beta and helium/alpha particles), and launches jets that collapse back into the Sun at its "surface". It's a blurry boundary, unlike the simple image most often implied, but it's real.

It would make a great movie :).

The first?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't mean to be picky, but this is from the front page:

BigBadBus writes "The BBC is reporting that NASA's twin spacecraft designed to obtain stereo images of the Sun have recorded the first Solar Tsunami."

Did you mean "the first footage of a solar tsunami", perhaps?

Re:But...

[evanbd]

The solar wind has a pressure, and you can measure it. And it changes. You could interpret that pressure as sound. It would be quiet by terrestrial standards, but an event like this would definitely make noise.

Of course, your microphone wouldn't bear much resemblance to a terrestrial one; measuring pressures that low is a tricky thing.

Kinda lame

[shird]

This might be an event on some otherwise quiet planet. But given the Sun itself is a gigantic ball of freakin' fire, with solar flares and enough UV to cause cancer in people on other planets, a bit of a wave doesn't seem quite as impressive.

Re:Holy cow

[Kalriath]

Yes, they've changed the whole discussion system again. And yes, the new system sucks even more than the old one. Which sucked considerably, compared to the even older one. You get the idea.

Re:A Tsunami on the SUN!

[ThinkOfaNumber]

FTA: "However, it was not exactly the same, Dr Gallagher added, because on the Sun, magnetic fields also helped the waves along. The phenomenon is therefore known as a magneto-acoustic wave.
so your name should be something to do with magneto-acoustic waves... Magnecoustami sounds a bit lame, maybe someone else can come up with one better...

Re:Correction

[MadnessASAP]

How about Massive Magnetically Propelled Solar Pressure Wave? This way we can sound really smart to other people without making any sense whatsoever.

Or we could just stick to terms that everyone can understand that also sufficiently describe the phenomenon.

Re:Holy cow

[dotancohen]

I got them too. At first I thought that the boxes were cool because it would help find the parent threads, but that just isn't the case. If the old discussion system was akin to block separation by indentation (python), then the new system is akin to XML's close-tag requirement. In other words, visually messy and confusing. Maybe if the blocks were colour coded for depth it would be easier, but I find myself doubting that as I type it.

And I do like the "you must preview before you post" requirement, as /. does not allow for the editing of threads.