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.
In orbit.. (Score:3, Interesting)
I can't wait to see what effect this has on those electronic things in orbit..
Re:Doesn't look as big as the sun itself to me (Score:5, Interesting)
If you want a more complete coverage of the event (not to mention a few more tasty videos) then there is a much better write up at The Sun Today .org [thesuntoday.org] which you should take a peek at.
Re:Timespan and other details (Score:3, Interesting)
If any of them end up heading more directly in the direction of Earth it could interfere badly with electronics, especially in satellites.
Question to anyone who knows -
Is it impossible to defend against this in any way other than pre-emptively? I would assume that usually, by the time we're aware of a massive flare, its effects would have already passed us by? It's not as if our monitoring equipment transmits faster than light, unless the detrimental effects of the blast moves slower than light.
What I"m trying to say is, if I have a roll of foil, can I put it on my computer AFTER the flare or should I make a project of turning my computer room into a foil faraday cage now?
Re:Timespan and other details (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not profitable to plan for rare events. It's profitable to plan for common events and let the insurance cover the catastrophes. The public interest be damned.
Spectroscopic analysis on ejected matter? (Score:2, Interesting)
I'd like to know if there was any more evidence for this:
http://www.thesunisiron.com/ [thesunisiron.com]
http://www.thesurfaceofthesun.com/ [thesurfaceofthesun.com]
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/ciencia_sol01.htm [bibliotecapleyades.net]
http://www.electric-cosmos.org/sun.htm [electric-cosmos.org]
http://www.electricuniverse.info/Electric_Sun_theory [electricuniverse.info]
Re:Timespan and other details (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It farted (Score:4, Interesting)
"Shit" is the past tense of "shit".
The simple past of 'to shit; is, in fact 'shat,' as in "the man shat his pants." 'To shit' is an example of a germanic strong verb which forms the past by use of an ablaut, such as: sing/sang; spit/spat; sit/sat; shit/shat ... etc. Were it weak verb it would form it's simple past with the addition of a suffix, ie. shitted.
"Shat" just sounds fucking stupid.
It sounds stupid to you. That is not only because of your poor grasp of the rules of grammar, but because those who use the word in everyday conversation are not necessarily any better educated than you are. Thus you will likely not have heard the word used grammatically.
To people who have had normative grammar rammed into their skulls, sentences such as, "The man sit on the bench." or "The man shit his pants." or "I remember when he sing a very sad song" or, to use a weak verb, "that guy fuck me over bad" sound, not merely "fucking stupid," but just plain wrong.