Science
Related: About this forumPlanet-Sized Tornado Whirls On Sun's Surface (video)
"A tremendous tornado whirling across the surface of the sun was captured by a NASA satellite recently an amazing wonder of the solar system that may be as big as the Earth itself."
This lasted for 30 hours on Feb. 7-8 and had winds gusts up to 300,000 mph. Our F5 tornadoes are 300 mph.
More information here:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/02/17/147071253/video-a-tornado-on-the-sun?ft=1&f=1001&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=pulsenews
cantbeserious
(13,039 posts)eom
Syrinx
(14,804 posts)That's pretty scary.
AlbertCat
(17,505 posts)Seems like a good time to post this link again
http://htwins.net/scale2/
tclambert
(11,086 posts)That is so very cool.
sce56
(4,828 posts)Thanks :^)
Little Star
(17,055 posts)tclambert
(11,086 posts)robbob
(3,530 posts)What were they thinking?
xocet
(3,871 posts)So, the OP has some video from the "Alien Disclosure Group UK" (which is where I get all my schematics of alien perpetual motion technology, so it has got to be a reliable source for science group OP's (sarcasm)), and NPR has a literal story.
At least, NPR linked to the SDO video - "Plasma Indirection" and not to some derivative video (from Space.com - "Tornado Season on the Sun?") which is incorrectly described in its title and which is altered to make the event longer that the actual original SDO video indicates. This altered video from Space.com is further altered by the "Alien Disclosure Group UK" to remove the Space.com credit at the end of the video and to add its own pathetic (if this judgmental term offends anyone, feel free to open subspace hailing frequencies at your convenience and contact me (sarcasm)) logo to the video - note that ADG (UK) appears in the lower left of the frame for the entire video.
The actual SDO video of the phenomenon is here:
NPR's reporting is here:
by Andrew Prince
Here's something you don't see every day: a tornado on the surface of the sun. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory posted this stunning video, which shows the sun's plasma sliding and spinning around in the star's magnetic fields for 30 hours earlier this month.
Terry Kucera, a solar physicist with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, told Fox News that the tornado might be as large as the Earth itself and have gusts up to 300,000 miles per hour. By comparison, the strongest tornadoes on earth, F5 storms, clock wind speeds at a relatively paltry (though incredibly destructive) 300 mph.
...
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/02/17/147071253/video-a-tornado-on-the-sun?ft=1&f=1001&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=pulsenews
Andrew Prince links his report to Fox News which actually eventually reports that the phenomenon is described by Terry Kucera as a solar prominence, not as a tornado.
Here is Fox News' reporting which is slightly more accurate than NPR's reporting in this case:
Published February 17, 2012 / FoxNews.com
(Fox News uses a five-fold copy of the original SDO video to create a video that is 1 minute and 42 seconds long.)
...
And the giant tornado may be as large as the Earth itself, with gusts of up to 300,000 mph, explained Terry Kucera, deputy SOHO project scientist and a solar physicist with NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center.
Its about 15,000 degrees Fahrenheit -- relatively cool, Kucera told FoxNews.com. After all, the suns corona is a whopping 2 million degrees, she explained.
Such tornadoes (Kucera classed it a solar prominence) have been known of for decades; the European Space Agency's SOHO spacecraft captured evidence of them as early as 1996, mainly near the Sun's north and south poles at the time. And though they resemble their cousins here on Earth, theyre created entirely differently, Kucera said -- through magnetism, not pressure and temperature fluctuations.
Those motions you see, its all just moving along the magnetic field somehow -- but were still looking to understand whats happening with these things, Kucera said.
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/02/17/vast-solar-tornado-spied-on-sun/#ixzz1mlgGJ7jj
Here is a description of a solar prominence:
Prominences are really just the same thing as filaments only viewed from a different perspective. Filament are seen on the solar disk however filament are very high up in the solar atmosphere, way above the surface. So when a filament is on the edge of the Sun the filament sticks out with space instead of the solar surface behind it. This makes the filament very bright compared to the dark (cold) background of space. We call a filament viewed this way a prominence. They can be simple looped shaped object or very irregular with a complicated structure.
http://www.thesuntoday.org/glossary/objects-on-and-from-the-sun/
So, is plasma motion the same as a "wind gust" and is a solar prominence really a tornado? The answers to those questions are simply no and no. It is too bad that reporters cannot be bothered to make proper distinctions, and it is even worse that NPR has shown itself to be less accurate than Fox News in this case.
onestepforward
(3,691 posts)I initially used the other video re: high definition, but I changed it to correspond with the article.
Thanks for the additional information.
1620rock
(2,218 posts)tridim
(45,358 posts)Both above and below the surface.
I can take the criticism, everyone already thinks I'm nuts.