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STEREO Satellites Spot Solar Flare Tsunami

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the gonna-need-more-spf dept.

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."

2 of 89 comments (clear)

  1. Re:A way to solve tsunamis problems on Earth ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    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.

  2. Large CME? by IGnatius+T+Foobar · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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?

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