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NASA To Explore "Secret Layer" of the Sun

Posted by Soulskill on Fri Sep 05, 2008 06:03 PM
from the don't-forget-your-metaphasic-shields dept.
Space NASA
SpaceAdmiral brings news that NASA will be launching a telescope next April, called Solar Ultraviolet Magnetograph Investigation (SUMI), which will examine what is called the "transition region" between the Sun's corona and the chromosphere. Scientists have studied characteristics of the Sun around this region before, but never within it. NASA notes: "It is a place in the sun's atmosphere, about 5000 km above the stellar surface, where magnetic fields overwhelm the pressure of matter and seize control of the sun's gases. It's where solar flares explode, where coronal mass ejections begin their journey to Earth, where the solar wind is mysteriously accelerated to a million mph. It is, in short, the birthplace of space weather."
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Submission: NASA to explore "secret layer" of the Sun by SpaceAdmiral (869318)
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  • I was going to say they should go at night.

  • Secret Layer? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 05 2008, @06:10PM (#24895791)

    Sun: Welcome to my secret layer, Mr Powers, I've been expecting you.

  • Solar Probe Plus (Score:5, Informative)

    by Geoffrey.landis (926948) on Friday September 05 2008, @06:11PM (#24895809) Homepage
    It's worth a note that another upcoming NASA mission, Solar Probe Plus [space.com], will actually probe the corona, not just look at it.

    See data and reports on Solar Probe Plus [nasa.gov]

    • Have we determined that the Sun is definitely not sentient?

      If it is, it seems like an awfully bad idea to go probing the corona of a being capable of melting us in a matter of seconds.

      • Re:Solar Probe Plus (Score:5, Funny)

        by fyoder (857358) * on Friday September 05 2008, @06:58PM (#24896163) Homepage Journal

        Have we determined that the Sun is definitely not sentient?

        Spock: She has sentience, Jim, but not as we know it. I would recommend you not have sex with this one.

        Kirk: But Spock, she's so hot!

        Spock: Yes, Jim. Too hot.

        Kirk: I've yet to meet...

        Spock: Don't make me nerve pinch you, Captain.

  • They filter out all light and suddenly discover there's a gigantic EULA on the surface of the sun?

  • Where is Doctor Evil's Secret Volcano Layer?

  • The cat's out the bag now, boys ... no longer a secret

    aw, what the hell - am drunk anyway, taking me longer than 20 minutes to type this out :-)
    • Yeah well it was fun while it lasted. Now it's gonna get all touristy.

    • actually, to get to the secret layer you have to fly through three solar flares then press up up down down left right left right a b a b select start then hit reset button on the console EXACTLY as you press start on controller two.

  • To access the Secret Sun Layer, you must first kill Baal. After you have killed Baal (making sure the quest has been completed), you can access the Secret Sun Layer.

    • Re:Traveling to the Secret Sun Layer. (Score:4, Funny)

      by nelk (923574) on Friday September 05 2008, @07:33PM (#24896411)

      To access the Secret Sun Layer, you must first kill Baal. After you have killed Baal (making sure the quest has been completed), you can access the Secret Sun Layer.

      Or, for those of us who don't like waiting, up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A will get you there faster.

  • Probe Me, Please (Score:5, Funny)

    by Kesch (943326) on Friday September 05 2008, @06:58PM (#24896167)

    "It is a place in the sun's atmosphere, about 5000 km above the stellar surface, where magnetic fields overwhelm the pressure of matter and seize control of the sun's gases. It's where solar flares explode, where coronal mass ejections begin their journey to Earth, where the solar wind is mysteriously accelerated to a million mph. It is, in short, the birthplace of space weather."

    Did anyone else get aroused reading the summary?

    I don't know about the rest of you, but the sun gets me pretty hot.

    • Re:Probe Me, Please (Score:4, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 05 2008, @07:11PM (#24896253)

      "It is a place in the sun's atmosphere, about 5000 km above the stellar surface, where magnetic fields overwhelm the pressure of matter and seize control of the sun's gases. It's where solar flares explode, where coronal mass ejections begin their journey to Earth, where the solar wind is mysteriously accelerated to a million mph. It is, in short, the birthplace of space weather."

      Did anyone else get aroused reading the summary?

      I don't know about the rest of you, but the sun gets me pretty hot.

      Did you have a coronal mass ejection?

    • that was terrible, you should be punished.

    • Did anyone else get aroused reading the summary?

      I don't know about the rest of you, but the sun gets me pretty hot.

      Well, she's still single, so go for it...

  • Cool screen backgrounds (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mikael (484) on Friday September 05 2008, @07:44PM (#24896479)

    I wonder if they will be able to get some more high resolution images like:

    High resolution image of Solar Granulation [solarphysics.kva.se]

    And some animations: Sun spot #1 [solarphysics.kva.se] Sun spot #2 [astro.uio.no]

  • They'll turn out to be the C'tan, and we all know what that leads to! Necrons!

  • It is, in short, the birthplace of solar weather.

    Fixed that for you.

  • It seems like every time the brains at NASA send out a new multi-gazillion dollar probe to investigate something, they always say that "this research will give us clues as to the origin of life"

    Personally, I think it's code-speak for "we just think this is fscking cool, but we need to justify spending gazillion bucks"

    • They didn't say that this time, so why did you mention it? And it's not a very expensive probe either.

  • How did Slashdot find out about the "secret" layer of the sun I JUST Blogged it on my "A-Space" page 10 minutes ago! it's SEECUREE!

  • It would be interesting to see if this supports the electric universe theory, that the sun is not powered by gravity fusion, but is instead a giant Plasma Lamp [thunderbolts.info]. The purpose of the probe is to measure magnetic field lines of the sun from earth's low orbit, and perhaps it can travel far enough in its 8 minutes to detect the radial field lines that the EU theories say must exist...

    • The EU book is a collection of half-truths that makes non-sensical claims such as "impact craters are caused by bolts of electricity". If there is ever another book burning fad it should be used to light the bonfire.

    • ...The purpose of the probe is to measure magnetic field lines of the sun...

      Does anybody know how to generate a magnetic field without the movement of charge? It has been an experiment clearly established and we use this effect every day, that electric currents produce magnetic fields. That is how all electric motors work. Since we can measure magnetic fields on the Sun, these must be due to immense electrical currents. The question then is: Where or what is the power supply that produces these currents? T

      • The cosmologists who admit only gravity as the controlling force operative in the large-scale universe, find it necessary to come up with all sorts of exotic constructs, such as black holes, dark matter and dark energy. If the 36 orders of magnitude greater electric interaction is ALSO taken into account, in addition to the force of gravity, then these exotic, weird figments of the astronomers imagination become unnecessary to explain the latest observation coming in from advanced, sophisticated space probes.

        What are you talking about?

        Black Holes were not some exotic construct necessary cooked up to make sense of observations. They were predicted by theorists on paper, and only after we calculated they must exist did anyone actually try looking for them. Which we did.

        • ....did anyone actually try looking for them....

          And so far they have never directly found any so called black hole either. They have found what some _interpret_ as indications of the existence of a black hole, but never a black hole itself. What is interpreted to be a powerful gravitational field, can also be interpreted to be a powerful electric or magnetic field. What we observe is what appears to be an exceedingly powerful force associated with what has been called an immensely massive object, such as a

          • By a black hole's inherent properties you can't directly observe it and to expect such direct observations is foolish. Electric forces aren't going to cause the space-time curvature that would hide the black hole to begin with. If black holes were wells of primarily electric force, why would they trap light making them so well, "black"?

            We know that the electric force is 36 orders of magnitude greater than gravity.

            Too bad the range of that electric force is too short for any of this pseudoscience to make any sense. Gravity, on the other hand actually has non-negligible range over a

            • ....Too bad the range of that electric force is too short....

              Both diminish the same way, but unlike gravity, electricity can also repel. All this black hole idea is a mathematical fiction which has NO physical reality. The immense energies involved with so called black holes can easily be interpreted to be the result of intense electromagnetic interactions. We have observed intense magnetic fields traversing cosmic distances in space. The sun and planets have magnetic fields. The sun produces a measured ele

              • Both diminish the same way[...]

                No, they don't diminish the same way in non-ideal settings, like the real universe. "gravity is important at long distances is because all masses are positive and therefore gravity's interaction cannot be screened like in electromagnetism." ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_interaction [wikipedia.org] )

                if black holes existed, we should be able to see a black, lightless area around them.

                We have observed massive sources of gravity (affecting visible neighboring bodies) which are not emitting light, which appears to confirm the presence of the event horizon shielding a large object with a ton of gra

  • I hope ithe mission is not at the peak of the Sunspot cycle, as their space vehicle will be turned into individual atoms floating in space.

  • Areas like this are where NASA should be spending more of their resources to bridge the gap between the time when more grand expeditions (Moonbase, Mars) will become more economically feasible. I'm not saying we shouldn't go, but a trillion here and a trillion there tends to add up fast.

    That trillion dollar Mars mission GWB suggested a few years ago disappeared down the toilet faster than a lead burrito.

    We can receive much pure and applied science from projects such as this per dollar spent than we could f

    • disappeared down the toilet faster than a lead burrito

      I don't have much personal experience with lead burritos (none, actually), but I think it won't make it round the bend. So it will just sit there at the bottom, never quite going away.

      And THERE you are 100% correct - it's a project that will never quite die. There will always be someone who'll resurrect it for a few weeks, like a zombie, with many (returning to your analogy) flushing for all it's worth.

  • ... that there are actually active areas for them to see next April during their 8 minutes of telescope activity. This solar minimum has been very quiet and long-lasting.

    • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

      by rgo (986711)
      It is a telescope, they're not launching something to the sun.

      • Reminds me of an interesting site (Score:5, Interesting)

        by causality (777677) on Friday September 05 2008, @08:50PM (#24896925)
        The Surface of the Sun [thesurfaceofthesun.com]. Viewed using a 171 angstrom filter, the sun appears to actually have a solid surface beneath the gas layers. It also seems to be electrically active. This is one of the more fascinating astronomy sites I've seen, mainly because they don't seem to start with a bias of "what we know can't be so". That always appeals to me, especially since "what we know is 100% impossible" is something that's been proven wrong, again and again, although that doesn't seem to stop anyone from asserting that this time we really have it right.

        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          by jessica_alba (1234100)
          very interesting site, and layman friendly; it contains a link to a peer reviewed paper that is a good read and very understandable:
          http://arxiv.org/ftp/astro-ph/papers/0511/0511379.pdf [arxiv.org]
          The papers states:
          a) The Sun and other stars act as plasma diffusers, sorting lighter atoms to their surfaces.

          b) The interior of the Sun is made of common elements in rocky planets and meteorites â" Fe, Ni, O, Si, and S â" although the lightest elements (H and He) cover its surface.

          c) Neutron-emission from

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by Tibor the Hun (143056)

          Warning, Electric Universe theory mentioned and referenced, as well as Plasma and Thunderbolt themes.

          Pretty pictures though.

          • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

            by Anonymous Coward

            electric currents on the sun are a given (its a big ball of plasma), whether or not the sun gets its power from inter-galactic Birkland currents (which this site makes no such claim) has yet to be proven or dis-proven.

        • that electrical activity is god.

    • Re: (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Maybe they should just invent metaphasic shielding?

      (And for the guy who thought SPF was a trollish reference, behold [wikipedia.org])

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