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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."

45 of 164 comments (clear)

  1. But... by langelgjm · · Score: 5, Funny

    No sound? Lame...

    --
    "Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
    1. Re:But... by evanbd · · Score: 4, Interesting

      What would it sound like, anyway? It's a pressure wave, aka a sound wave (mostly, there's apparently magnetic effects involved too), but really loud. Really, really loud. But, that sharp rise and fall in pressure has a definable sound to it. I'm sure someone will do a better job than I can, but I think it would sound a lot like a "pop" but with tonality to it -- it's not a sharp-edged delta function, but rather a bandpass-filtered version of one. It looks from the scale, though, like it's a very low frequency wave -- well into the subsonic regime. You wouldn't so much hear it or even feel it as get blown back and forth by it. Well, neglecting that detail about the energy levels involved. Suffice to say that overpowered stereo your neighbor has wouldn't come close...

    2. Re:But... by evanbd · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    3. Re:But... by 4D6963 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      You know, when you turn a seismogram into sound and speed it up, it sounds pretty much like rubbing two rocks against each other. That sort of event usually sounding the way you'd expect them to once you speed it up enough, I'd say this solar Tsunami must sound like the type of explosion you'd expect to hear.

      --
      You just got troll'd!
    4. Re:But... by evwah · · Score: 5, Funny

      too bad you can't hear the woosh sound of that joke going over your head in space either

    5. Re:But... by S.O.B. · · Score: 5, Funny

      If you play it backwards you hear, "Paul is dead, Paul is dead".

      --
      Some of what I say is fact, some is conjecture, the rest I'm just blowing out my ass...you guess.
    6. Re:But... by evanbd · · Score: 2, Informative

      Huh? We're talking about measuring the solar wind, ie interplanetary vacuum. As in, positioned at a distance comparable to Earth's orbit. The instrument in question would be more like a particle detector than a microphone or pressure gauge. (IANA astrophysicist.)

    7. Re:But... by Zode · · Score: 3, Funny

      actually you hear "Here comes the sun."

    8. Re:But... by somersault · · Score: 2, Funny

      Explosion? I'd expected to hear some surfing music, possibly "good vibrations"

      --
      which is totally what she said
    9. Re:But... by Front+Line+Assembly · · Score: 2, Informative

      Here are apperently some links:
      http://www1.gly.bris.ac.uk/~george/noises/text.html

      Doesn't sound like rocks grinding to me...

  2. Global warming? by reboot246 · · Score: 5, Funny
    Probably caused by global warming. Everything else seems to be.

    (tongue in cheek)

    1. Re:Global warming? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      If only we were that lucky. This was the clearly work of Galactus. He probably got tired of his herald making jokes about that big jug head of his and tossed his silver ass into the sun at about half the speed of light. Surf this, jerk.

    2. Re:Global warming? by jimmux · · Score: 5, Funny

      This is nothing. Wait until the sun's ice caps melt, then we'll be in trouble.

    3. Re:Global warming? by Krusso88 · · Score: 5, Funny

      Maybe Al Gore will have a Live Sun concert to raise enough funds to prevent future tSUNnami's

    4. Re:Global warming? by kylehase · · Score: 2, Funny

      The source was a solar glacier breaking off.

      --
      You want fun, go home and buy a monkey!
  3. Gosh... by kclittle · · Score: 2, Funny

    I hope no one was hurt.

    --
    Generally, bash is superior to python in those environments where python is not installed.
  4. What?!?! by Idiot+with+a+gun · · Score: 2, Funny

    I missed an opportunity to surf the greatest wave ever?

  5. Special Effects by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    --

    --
    make install -not war

    1. Re:Special Effects by yorugua · · Score: 4, Funny

      That movie is pretty cool
      I can't agree. I'd say it's very hot.
    2. Re:Special Effects by orangepeel · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I'm the same way. One of the things that gives me pause is when a publication states that something is "hotter than the surface of the sun."

      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?

      I assume that somewhere at the sun's core you've got some type of phenomenally wacky material, and from there on out you're just looking at an energized soupy plasma that just gets progressively less and less dense. Even if you get to some point where somebody decides the pressure suddenly becomes worthy of "surface" status, it's still not going to be anything like a surface in the minds of most normal humans. The "surface" is roiling, boiling, and exploding with astronomical energies non-stop. That seems to me like trying to describe an exploding can of aerosol cheese as a cohesive solid, and I dare say we all know from experience how ridiculous that would be.

      To me, referring to the surface of the sun seems akin to invoking the question, "what's the length of the coastline of England?" My answer would be, "on what scale?" But I seem to be the only one who feels that way, so perhaps I'm just in the dark over something. Has someone figured out some cool relationship between the gravitational ability of the sun to hold on to its own matter compared with the average energy of a certain layer of plasma or something? I don't know. I never hear it talked about. All I ever hear is that simple phrase, "the surface of the sun," used in article after article ... like it's so damn obvious and how much of a moron I must be to stumble over it every time.

      Sometimes I suspect that someone, somewhere, with god-like precision simply declared one day, "no, this distance outward from the core represents the surface, and fuck you if you doubt me".

      *shrug*

      --
      Whoever designed level 61 in Frozen Bubble is a sadistic bastard.
    3. 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.
    4. Re:Special Effects by Alamais · · Score: 2, Informative

      Hmm...while, yes, the sun is (mostly) made up of gasses, it is still very dense, so I don't know that 'gauzy' is the right word. It's dense enough for fusion to take place in the core, and for the photons that are the energy thus released to take thousands of years to reach the surface. Not solid, but certainly no morning fog, either.

      The little bit you might be able to see through is just the very upper atmosphere (probably gaps under prominences and CMEs), and the best views of that kind of stuff aren't in visible light anyway, since the sun is brightest in visible light, and tends to overwhelm instruments and eyes. For an image in other wavelengths, I don't know that it's stars you're seeing (could just be image artifacts), and the color is false anyway.

      I've been studying this stuff for class, and this really is a cool movie & event in its own right. I mean, judging from the article, this wave was moving at close to .2% of light speed, which is quite fast. A tsunami on Earth moving that fast would sweep across the surface in a little over a minute. Boom.

    5. Re:Special Effects by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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 :).

      --

      --
      make install -not war

    6. Re:Special Effects by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I'm thinking of, for example, this NASA image of the Sun (blasting a jet right through the Earth back in 2003).

      --

      --
      make install -not war

    7. 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.

  6. Run for the hills! by 4D6963 · · Score: 2, Funny

    Oh shit, how long until the wave reaches us?!?

    --
    You just got troll'd!
    1. Re:Run for the hills! by OldManAndTheC++ · · Score: 2, Funny

      Just wait until Mercury and Venus jump up and throw their hands in the air, then we're next. Don't mis-time it and spoil things for everybody else!

      --
      Soylent Green is peoplicious!
  7. The first? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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?

  8. Fun on the Sun by Revenger75 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Let's go mega-surfin' Dude! It will be rad(iation)! I'll bring the 3.0x10^8 SPF sunblock, you bring the Unobtainium surfboards, and Cowboy Neil will bring the beer.

    1. Re:Fun on the Sun by langelgjm · · Score: 3, Funny

      and Cowboy Neil will bring the beer.

      You must be... no, scratch that, you ARE new here.

      --
      "Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
    2. Re:Fun on the Sun by Nibbler999 · · Score: 2, Funny

      Try a corona.

  9. SNAP by cpricejones · · Score: 4, Funny

    Your momma is so fat when she steps into the ocean her ripples cause a tsunami ... ON THE SUN

  10. No tourists this time of year by EmbeddedJanitor · · Score: 4, Funny

    The sun is very hot except at night.

    --
    Engineering is the art of compromise.
  11. Kinda lame by shird · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    --
    I.O.U One Sig.
  12. Obligatory... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    What would it sound like, anyway? Hmm, what would a wave of gas sound like?

    First, did it come out of Uranus?
  13. Re:Holy cow by Kalriath · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

    --
    For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
  14. Correction by relikx · · Score: 3, Informative

    I believe Solar Tsunami is a bit of a misnomer. As tsunami literally translates to 'harbor wave' a more accurate name would be Taiyounami or perhaps Ra-tasm.

  15. Re:Totally Gnarly, Dood! by kylehase · · Score: 3, Funny

    Make sure to use all-temperature wax.

    --
    You want fun, go home and buy a monkey!
  16. Re:A Tsunami on the SUN! by Spy+der+Mann · · Score: 4, Funny

    Heck, let's make a new word for that. Let's call it "Sunami" :D

  17. Re:A Tsunami on the SUN! by ThinkOfaNumber · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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...

  18. The Martian Asks: by Somegeek · · Score: 5, Funny

    "Where's the Kaboom? There was supposed to be an Earth-shattering Kaboom!"

    --
    And as you tread the halls of sanity, You feel so glad to be, Unable to go beyond. I have a message, From another time..
    1. Re:The Martian Asks: by Krupuk · · Score: 2, Funny

      ...followed by an Earth-shattering silence?

  19. 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.

  20. Re:Holy cow by dotancohen · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

    --
    It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
  21. Re:Network gear meltdown! by thatskinnyguy · · Score: 2, Funny

    You forgot to put this in your configs.

    Router#config t
    Router(config)#no sunspot degradation

    If you had put this in you wouldn't have these issues. Sunspot interference is turned on by default. But after you disable it, the case acts like a Faraday Cage so you won't have to worry about pesky radiation interfering with your lan/wan operations.

    In reality though, I suppose Cisco equipment does have some stuff enabled yet not configured by default that I would rather it not.

    --
    The game.