Massive Explosion On the Sun 202
Endoflow2010 sends word of an enormous eruption that occurred on the Sun this morning. Phil Plait describes it thus:
"What you’re seeing here is a solar flare (an enormous explosion of pent-up magnetic energy) coupled with a prominence (a physical eruption of gas from the surface). This event blasted something like a billion tons of material away from the Sun. Note the size of it, too: while it started from a small region on the Sun’s surface, it quickly expanded into a plume easily as big as the Sun itself! I’d estimate its size at well over a million kilometers across."
The attached video is well worth watching.
Better video (Score:5, Informative)
You need to see both to get a fuller appreciation of the scale, but the 2nd video in the article is more impressive, IMHO:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpkXhlPIINQ [youtube.com]
Re:This is a reminder... (Score:5, Informative)
You think that's bad, wait until you read about Gamma-Ray Bursts [wikipedia.org]. A big pulse of gamma radiation which - if one occurred near enough to us (say, in the same galaxy and pointing in our direction) would wipe out all life on Earth. Gamma rays travel at the speed of light. We wouldn't see it coming. There might be one hitting the edge of the atmosphere right now.
Too late to use those mod points...
Re:Timespan and other details (Score:4, Informative)
We often see them coming thanks to satellites like the one that made these movies. It takes hours-days for the flare to get from the sun to Earth, so there is time to prepare. I think it's hard to be sure exactly how hard any given flare will hit the Earth, though.
I'm not sure if your foil-on-computer question is an analogy or not. On the personal scale I expect that your regular surge protector is sufficient. The disaster planning needs to be centered on the large-scale power grid, because it's the long power lines that build up the overvoltage, not your living room. We're not worried as much about your computer as we are half the power substations on earth exploding within an hour of each other.
NASA source footage (Score:5, Informative)
http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/aiahmi/rangeform.php [nasa.gov]
Instructions to view the subject solar flare: select browse by date range, enter 2011-06-07 00:00:00 as the beginning and 2011-06-07 12:00:00 as the end dates, select movie as the display, select resolution 1024x1024, and set nth = 1, submit and enjoy. Also, you can play with the different telescopes.
Re:It farted (Score:4, Informative)
I used 'shat' in a scrabble tournament. It passed challenge. I assure you, it is a word.