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."

So...

[lolololol]

Why is there reason to be "concerned"? It is an interesting find, but that solar gas won't do much to harm Earth.

Bad Article

[Stoutlimb]

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?

And the concern is...?

[ThunderBird89]

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.

Re:Bad Article

[anlag]

Yes, went to post exactly the same thing. Not to bash the submission as such since it's nice to see people take an interest in my field of work, but surely it's not that much to ask to find the referenced article. Mind you, the space.com piece although better also doesn't go very much in depth of the subject. Then again one of the reasons for that is likely that it simply isn't a very big deal. The Sun is a very dynamic object, always has been and always will be. And that it spills stuff into space is hardly news, or cause for concern. They're still nice pictures though, from a great mission.

Re:So...

[MBaldelli]

Why is there reason to be "concerned"? It is an interesting find, but that solar gas won't do much to harm Earth.

Having done a little scanning of this news from the source of the article, NASA, Space Weather, this is hardly rare and not the sign of an impending stellar apocalypse. From the less credible sources, the concerns that are sort of just below the surface is that the sun's going to lose it's fuel because of these holes in much the same manner as it was originally thought if we were to sent rockets into space would punch holes in the atmosphere of Earth causing all the air to funnel off into space.

One would hope such wacky conspiracy theorists would've died off around the same time as it was determined driving in a car more than 25 MPH would cause our bones to turn to jelly, but it would appear that they're still around.

Re:Your toast - which way?

[maxwell demon]

The thing is, something *does* happen at the end of the 31st of December – the earth ends it's current revolution around the sun.

So what is so special about the point of the orbit it happens to reach at that time? It's not even the perihel (closest point to the sun), which comes a few days later, nor the winter solstice (when the tilt of the earth's axis aligns with the radial vector of the orbit), which is shortly before Christmas. There's absolutely nothing remarkable about the point in orbit at 31st of December.