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Five Glorious Years of Sun Images In a Four-Minute Video

Posted by Soulskill on from the dang,-sun dept.

An anonymous reader writes: In early 2010, NASA launched the Solar Dynamics Observatory. It carried a number of sensors dedicated to watching and measuring various aspects of the Sun. The SDO's team just celebrated its fifth anniversary by going through a half-decade worth of images, pulling out the most amazing ones, and stitching them into an amazing video (YouTube). It includes enormous flares, sunspots, the transit of Venus, and more.

2 of 49 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Speechless by Celarent+Darii · · Score: 5, Informative

    1,500 years ago, everybody knew that the Earth was the center of the universe. 500 years ago, everybody knew that the Earth was flat.

    Except that is completely wrong. To quote an ancient from 300 BC [well over 1500 years ago]: [Text is actually quoted from Archimedes The Sand Reckoner]

    Aristarchus has brought out a book consisting of certain hypotheses, wherein it appears, as a consequence of the assumptions made, that the universe is many times greater than the 'universe' just mentioned. His hypotheses are that the fixed stars and the Sun remain unmoved, that the Earth revolves about the Sun on the circumference of a circle, the Sun lying in the middle of the Floor, and that the sphere of the fixed stars, situated about the same center as the Sun, is so great that the circle in which he supposes the Earth to revolve bears such a proportion to the distance of the fixed stars as the center of the sphere bears to its surface.

    And even the medieval theologians knew that the earth was round. To quote St. Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologica :

    Sciences are differentiated according to the various means through which knowledge is obtained. For the astronomer and the physicist both may prove the same conclusion: that the earth, for instance, is round: the astronomer by means of mathematics (i.e. abstracting from matter), but the physicist by means of matter itself. Hence there is no reason why those things which may be learned from philosophical science, so far as they can be known by natural reason, may not also be taught us by another science so far as they fall within revelation. Hence theology included in sacred doctrine differs in kind from that theology which is part of philosophy.

    That the earth is round was a fact so evident and proven in his time [1247, well over 500 years ago] that it was used as an example of a scientific fact. It is simply false that they thought the earth was flat.

    Much of what is said about the ancients is just complete fantasy written by propagandists and not historians.

  2. Re:Speechless by Celarent+Darii · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Columbus was able to convince not only the Queen Isabella, but also the crews and investors who financed the voyage. There was never question of whether India was on the other side of the ocean, but rather of how far away it was. Columbus had a much smaller number than was commonly admitted, which is one reason he got the funds to go [he won the contract, if you will]. Yet the question was on how many degrees of longitude, not on whether the earth was round.

    In fact just read most medieval poetry and songs, which were well known to the people. They always refer to the earth as 'this globe' or the sphere. Even a simple sailor knows why the the ship going over the horizon doesn't just get smaller, it also 'descends' over the horizon or disappears. The visible effect of the earth's curvature is visible on the open ocean at just 100 km distance so this is something that even simple workers would know about from observation.

    The myth that people thought the earth was flat is just simply 19th century re-invention of history. It has no basis in fact.