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Two Huge Holes In the Sun Spotted
An anonymous reader writes "Japanese scientists have spotted two huge holes on the sun's magnetic field, and it appears there is some reason to be concerned about. The holes, called coronal holes, are gateways for solar material and gas to spill out into space, according to space.com. The gaps in the sun's magnetic field make a hole through its atmosphere, letting gas out, NASA has said."
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sdo/news/news20110111-corona-hole.html
more info...
Why is there reason to be "concerned"? It is an interesting find, but that solar gas won't do much to harm Earth.
Ah 2012 - thought the Mayans said Mother earth was going to laugh and reformat herself. Looks like Father Sun has a different choice for cooking us.
*sniff *sniff*
"The Sun did it".
We all know it was Cowboy Neil.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Quick! Curb our CO2 emissions! They are burrowing into the sun!
I have a hole, gas comes out, but it doesn't do much to harm Earth.
Just because it has been detected now doesn't mean it hasn't been around for hundreds, thousands, millions, or even billions of years already. So too early to say that these holes are anything to worry about. After all, the sun does coronal mass ejections quite often, some of which are aimed towards us, which while major events generally uneventful, maybe with some satellites knocked out.
Holes in the sun! Sun losing gas to space! "Probably time is finally taking a toll on the benevolent star, which has been toiling hard for millennia!"
I wouldn't exactly call this science journalism. No explanation why, what will happen, etc... The only link on the article is labeled "NASA", but points to the main page of this crappy website. To their credit they have a photo of the sun, but is from another solar space mission unrelated to the article.
Hey editors, how on earth did this awful link get onto the main page?
So if SOHO says Sol has holes, we're SOL?
Be relentless!
TFA is remarkably poorly written. Poor grammar, poor structure, poor explanation, poor sourcing. Something tells me this anonymous "IB Times Staff Reporter" got the job by answering "work from home" spam.
The way I see it, unless one of those holes were pointed straight at us for an extended time, which is impossible due to difference in the orbital velocity of Earth and the rotational velocity of the Sun, we have nothing to worry about, and even then we'd only get a few blanked-out satellites.
Hyperbole: I use it liberally!
Don't freak out that there's now an opening in the corona. Freak out when a celestial lime slice gets wedged it.
Shameless plug for my photos on Flickr
Where is an image of the goatse guy when you need it?
That would be home made Kombucha(org) Tea. You call this 'weather'?
The Sky Is Falling!
Oh no! A hole in the sun. Call the president, America will save us!!
So THAT is where all the sun spots went!
Extremely badly written article. The coronal holes over the south and north pole of the sun have basically always been there, and been predicted by solar wind models for at least 50 years. The news here is simply that the hinode spacecraft managed to image them conclusively for the first time.
No reason to be concerned. Trust me, I'm a solar scientist.
A solar fart.
My web domain.
Reminds me of an "educational" song I was exposed to when I was five or six:
The Sun is a mass,
of incandescent gas,
a gigantic nuclear furnace.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Woohoo! We're all gonna die! We're all gonna die!
Oh! Wait!
On spaceweather.com you have a daily picture of the sun: sunspots, holes... what I find interesting, that each and every day, when systems or people around me start behaving, then it's always something on the sun. So - what you've got is nothing new. How did your neighbor behave today?
Visit spaceweather.com daily for a month or two, and keep an eye on the various Sun images on the left side. One is used to point out coronal holes, and you'll quickly realize how common they are. This may be related to the approaching solar maximum, though don't quote me on that.
I'm much more concerned about flare and mass ejection frequency. With all the satellites and poorly-shielded electrical circuits we rely upon, one or two wicked ejections aimed at Earth could turn a lot of gear into expensive junk.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
This site have a common profile for readers that should had been taken into account making the title of article. Something like "Sun farted. Oracle got it", or "We are toast, starting by Nokia". Should't be so bad, in other sites could had been "2012 doomsday true, Sun starting to break", "Another proof that global warming is a myth", or "The dangers of loose bullets"
So our sun is venting fuel.. Probably didn't like the 15% Ethenol in it.. If the sun sees fit to fertalize space with it - odds are my car won't like it either.
Im confused, I know that the sky is falling. I know that its caused by greenhouse gasses. I just dont know how in the hell the gasses got up there. Somebody better call Al Gore for me.
It's the same old thing as yesterday.
I'll be honest, we're throwing science against the wall to see what sticks. -Cave Johnson
The Sun is a Miasma of Incandescent Plasma They make a great children's CD, BTW.
More
I'm pretty sure we are at the nastiest point of he current solar cycle.
Looking at the NASA link above, I think they have discovered a "Solar Goatse".
Now the trick will be getting the other solar systems to look at it...
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
So the sun is farting?
sun corona video february 2011 here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NixmnoWE8RQ
These "holes" maybe let out 1 million atoms per cubic centimeter. That may sound like a lot, but on Earth this would be called a hard vacuum.
The Sun is also converting 6.2×10**11 kg of matter into energy per second and radiating it all away. One wonders that there is anything left after all of this time.
so the wife just asked what i want to do this afternoon.... it would be helpful if someone could clarify if we are all going to die or not?
because if we are I'm going to be god damned if i'm going to go home depot for supplies to fix things about the house.
actually I am happy to see you, however that is in fact a banana in my pocket.
It wont even create a good aurora. We need a good M type flare for that. Bummer. The wife really wants to see a good aurora someday. We live to close to the city lights for any good viewing. We would have to drive out into the country. Well since we are approaching solar maximum, we might have to take a drive in the next year or two. Here is the link that describes the events: www.spaceweather.com "BEHEMOTH SUNSPOT 1158: Sunspot 1158 is growing rapidly (48 hour movie) and crackling with C-class solar flares. The active region is now more than 100,000 km wide with at least a dozen Earth-sized dark cores scattered beneath its unstable magnetic canopy. Earth-directed eruptions are likely in the hours ahead." Class M flares are good for viewing. Class X is where we lose electricity or radio/satellites.
There's a black cat caught in a high tree top
He who smelled it, dealt it as the saying goes, so stop trying to blame the sun...
Seriously, can we get an edit button?
I wish the article would give some scientific reasons for why we should be concerned about "Two Huge Holes" and not leave it to the masses to make uneducated gesticulations. Does this mean that the sun is dying?
Of course its bad!
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
So this is it.
We're going to die.
Whether it were proven to be dying tomorrow or a couple hundred years from now, we're nowhere close to being able to go anywhere or survive without it.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
It could not be anyone else's.
Did someone fire DESTINI at the sun? Do we have to have CORE 2 with Virgil 2 to drill to the center of the sun to restart its core?
:Let's start a furore over solar cooling!!
Jedis are stupid. If they were so powerful, why couldn't they handle counseling for a kid who missed his mom?
God is going to pick the sun up like a bowling ball and toss it into the black hole in the center of the milky way. Probably on 12/21/2012
- Things are the way they are because they're coded that way -
"it appears there is some reason to be concerned about" Yeah! Let's all be concerned about this. That'll help.
Most creatures only need one hole to pass gas. The Sun needs two!
First there was holes in the ozone layer. Now they are in the Sun itself. Damn you greedy corporations, you should have listened the warnings!
and as buggy's used to say 'thats all folks'. Pity we didn't put any DNA on the Voyager's, but Hay-ho there's bugger all out there to reconstruct humans
It sounds like solar warming must be creating holes in its magnetic field!
Oops, sorry about that! I'll pick a different celestial body to test my deathray on in the future...
At least you didn't make the same mistake the second time.
After decades of 'free' energy being stolen from the sun, the sun has finally had enough & started a protest. If the 'free' energy theft continues, according to sources close to the sun who wish to remain unnamed, then it will start sending DRM takedown notices to all solar panel owners. The sun's legal team insists that solar power harvesting is breaking the physical encryption it is using & is therefore covered by the DMCA.
The sun could not be reached for direct comment.
The Gobal Warming scam artists are going to sink their pseudo-science claws into this. :(
or else it's Bush's fault.
Hey! the sun is over 5 Billion years old. like us humans, it is bound to start showing its age.
Understanding is much like a 3-edged-sword. in this: there are always 2 sides and the truth.
Great. There's a hole in the Sun. Now all the helium will leak out and the Sun won't float in the sky anymore.
The coronal holes are caused by Global Warming.....
Sorry had to ask.
OMG my sun might fart on us.
Slowly waving my hand - "This is not the sig you are looking for."
nt
Oh, the beautiful gloss of greality!
Give 'em a week and some crackpot's gonna say this'll cause the End Of The World in 2012. These holes have been around forever and now that we know about them, they'll surely kill us all.
In common parley.. that is called farting.
Is this how a piece of the sun shoots out and hits passing federation science ships while its gravity threatens a long lost colony?
But this does not answer the most important question: Is there any danger of Earth falling into one of these holes? Or indeed, if Earth would even fit into these holes? People are panicking!
At least nobody will dare to say that this is human made...
Turns out the two holes are an inch apart.
Two holes with Gas shooting out.... come on people I'm in a deadlock as to which of the million jokes this generates.......
00101010
When the spewed out material hits mother earth in her face, will she spit or swallow?
$ unzip, strip, touch, finger, grep, mount, fsck, more, yes,fsck,fsck,fsck,umount, sleep
The solar research community has known about coronal holes, and the potential impact of plasma which can flow through these "holes" on earth, for decades. This appears to be another "sky is falling" piece by people who are desperately awaiting the return of solar activity. The current solar cycle is a very late starter, and given that the "seasons" for space weather geeks (myself included) is 11-12 years long, one starts getting antsy when the long, dry solar minimum stretches a couple of years longer than expected. In short, "move along, nothing to see here."
until someone offers "evidence" that this is our fault as a species; and you thought global warming guilt was bad.
How much money do I have to give to Al Gore to make this go away?
Oh, like you haven't.