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STEREO Satellites Spot Solar Flare Tsunami
westtxfun writes "The STEREO satellites recently confirmed the existence of solar mega-tsunamis when they captured height data after a sunspot recently erupted. The scale of this tsunami literally dwarfs the Earth's diameter — it was 62,000 miles high and raced across the surface at 560,000 mph! STEREO A and B orbit 90 degrees apart and luckily, one was overhead while the other saw the eruption on the limb. This gave NASA scientists enough data to confirm the tsunami wasn't a shadow, solving a modern solar mystery. The images are simply stunning, to boot."
that will hit the earth's core and cause the plates to shift like in 2012?
Reading TFA is uncharacteristic for most slashdotters, but this one is definitely worthwhile.
Pun aside, the movies ARE great. RTFA please, everyone! You'll be glad you did.
Free Martian Whores!
kawabunga.
The article speaks about a 100,000 km high (62,000 mile high) tsunami. Assuming that they are referring to the initial height of the surface wave, that is no doubt a typo since the sun's diameter is only 14 times that. Likely, they meant something rather less such as 100,000 m or 100 km. That's still a big wave though.
Just correcting the summary, one spacecraft is *ahead* of the other (and of Earth) -- not "overhead". Also, they don't orbit 90-deg apart. They were ~90-deg apart for the even in question but are currently 127-deg apart. This value will increase as they continue in their orbits around the Sun. (By Feb 6, 2011 they will be 180-degrees apart, and will both be "behind" the Sun in ~mid-2015.)
exclamation points have no place in article summaries!
You imbeciles, clearly they are a series of solar particles!
It's 2 years early!
A correction from the summary: the two spacecraft are nearly 128 degrees apart, not 90. They were launched into slightly different heliocentric orbits that cause the angle between them to increase by about 21 degrees per year. They've already passed through the L4 and L5 Lagrangian points of the Sun-Earth system. In Feb 2011, they'll be on opposite sides of the Sun, then start to converge once again.
FTA:
"We wondered," recalls Gurman, "is that a wave—or just a shadow of the CME overhead?"
Really? They thought it was a shadow? And what pray-tell would be shining brightly enough from above the CME material, to cast a shadow onto the surface of the Sun?
They didn't really think that through, did they?
Nothing to see here
Anyone else see the gifs and think "BOOM! HEADSHOT!"
From the article :
Since when does 9 months ago count as 'recent' ?
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
I wonder if we had anything observing the opposite side of the Sun when this happened. Seeing the effects that occur exactly opposite of the flare might tell us something about the Sun's core.
Shadows on the surface of the sun?
Must have been light from Venus reflecting off some swamp gas...
Ascalante: Your bride is over 3,000 years old.
Kull: She told me she was 19!
I am going to investigate of if China is building Arc ships
When a thief sees a saint, all he sees are his pockets!
The slow response to this Tsunami is clearly George Bush's fault.
Since when does 9 months ago count as 'recent' ?
Get off my lawn!
Free Martian Whores!
For the sake of us amateur radio operators, I sure hope so. HF DX has sucked for the last few years.
This ain't rocket surgery.
Wait a minute. Wasn't a CME this big supposed to completely destroy the power grid? Wasn't this supposed to plunge us back into the stone age?
So what happened?
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
The Sun is over 4.5 billion years old. Slightly less than how old you feel when you see your kids have grown up.
9 months is but a blink of an eye.
Does anyone else look at that movie and think that the whole thing could go "boom", like, anytime? OMG, that would NOT be pleasant.
Sure, but Slashdot still facilitates the best discussion on the net.
But I think in general as people grow up and find better things to do they move on. So it's always going to be broken because the best people move on.
Well, the one that was 90 degrees away will have seen the other side of the sun as well. The video on the front page doesn't show that half though.
Well, at least STEREO proved that phrase wrong.
We now know the Sun boils and splashes like a pot of hot chili on a stove. Now, who's going to clean up the cosmic stove top of all the solar splatters?
Hello, kdawson's incognito account!
Idiot.
Geologic time?
Actually, I confirmed it with one of the scientists (Joe Gurman) cited in the article -- there was an article from March that was inaccurate, and this was a correction to that previous article.
But, instead of marking it as a correction, it was posted as a new article. (I can't find the older article, so I don't know if it was removed)
They also linked straight to the movie, rather than to the explanation of what is being seen in the movie, or cite the original posting of the article, which had different images:
http://stereo.gsfc.nasa.gov/news/SolarTsunami.shtml
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/stereo/news/solar_tsunami.html
Joe also said that this was in fact "tsunami-like" in that it was the result of an initially downward wave that reflected back up, as opposed to other CMEs.
(and I probably should've added a disclaimer earlier -- I work for the STEREO Science Center)
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
It's tsunamis, not tsunami's.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
i guess i need more RPG instead of so much TNA
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"Stardate 2322.1, Captain's log, Stereo A, Linux commanding. After three years, I have completed my first assignment as master of this vessel, cataloging gaseous planetary anomalies in Alpha Quadrant. We're continuing our mission under full gravitational power. I'm pleased to report that ship and programming have functioned well."
*starts a cronjob*
*rumble...rattle-rattle-RATTLE-RATTLE..*
ALERT! ALERT!
"Sir, we're getting a massive energy reading, dead ahead!"
"On screen!" ...
"My...God! Shields! SHIELDS!
[End Of Line]
I'm sorry, this is /. Primary sources are not allowed to be involved in the conjectural, ad hominem disputes that pose for debate on this forum. You are welcome to contribute to some other topic, provided that you know nothing about it. Have a nice day.
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
OK -- I get it. The sun is lighting its "hot gases" with nuclear fire, emitting what is probably the biggest flaming fart in this end of the galaxy. Bad diet of black holes on top of frozen comets no doubt...
Very funny, Sol.
I think you only need to append a disclaimer if you're trying to sell us something. You're not here for marketing, you're here for science! :)
they are building Daedalus-class ships
because scientists never market their theories? apparently the last conference I was at was a hallucination.
it was damned honest of the GP to provide that context. I laud him/her for it.
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
...anticipate when a CME or radiation storm will reach Earth
It'll be at least eight minutes..
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Sure, they have a stereo image, but when will 5.1 channel version be available?
I wonder if we had anything observing the opposite side of the Sun when this happened.
The project's orbital information page states that the two spacecraft are currently separated by 128 degrees. (They orbit about 0.05 AU inside and outside earth's orbit, so that their orbital periods are 346 and 388 days, and their separation changes by about 44 degrees annually.) The entire sun will be visible when they achieve 180 degrees separation in February 2011. With earth based observations, the full sun will continue to be visible another eight years. A few months of contact will be lost in 2015 as they pass behind the sun. (If only Ulysses was still operating, we could get some polar views as well. It should be silently making its next solar passes sometime around 2013-2014.)
STEREOs lunar gravitational slingshot (animated at the project's orbital simulation page) was very cool.
They are supposed to be searching for Trojan asteroids as they pass through Earth's L4 and L5 Lagrangian points, but I've not heard of any results yet.
If only Ulysses was still operating, we could get some polar views as well.
I suppose it would also help if Ulysses had been equipped with a camera.
"packing as much energy as 2400 megatons of TNT"
That seems a bit low, doesn't it? Only two orders of magnitude more than what we've produced in a single nuke explosion?
Property law should use #'EQ, not #'EQUAL.
Well, actually, the folks who run the NASA STEREO portal page, and the science writer, Dr. Tony Phillips, both lot track of this story for several months. It then appeared on the portal page,
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/stereo/news/solar_tsunami.html ,
with the wrong videos, I got all bent out of shape, and Tony posted better video and graphics at the Science @NASA page. All three (including http://stereo.gsfc.nasa.gov/news/SolarTsunami.shtml cited above) now have the short video clip that Dr. Angelos Vourlidas was referring to when he said the movies "are out of this world."
Am I the only one who, upon reading "Solar Flare Tsunami", said it in the delivery of some overpowered fighter yelling his attack out:
SOLAR FLARE TSUNAMI!
RAGING DEATH BLAST!
LINEAR TAX RATE!
SPINNING SIDE KICK!
HADOUKEN!
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-