Thanks to Julie for bringing this to my attention:
Astronomers have captured the first footage of a solar “tsunami” hurtling through the Sun’s atmosphere at over a million kilometres per hour.
The event was captured by Nasa’s twin Stereo spacecraft designed to make 3D images of our parent star.
Naturally, this type of tsunami does not involve water; instead, it is a wave of pressure that travels across the Sun very fast.
In a solar tsunami, a huge explosion near the Sun, such as a coronal mass ejection or flare, causes a pressure pulse to propagate outwards in a circular pattern. …
“In half an hour, we saw the tsunami cover almost the full disc of the Sun, nearly a million kilometres away from the epicentre.”
“The fact that this region of the Sun spewed out two major flares just a day apart “implies that there must have been some kind of tremendous energy buildup”, Balasubramaniam [of the National Solar Observator in Sunspot New Mexico] told New Scientist.
The buildup of energy is thought to be related to the twisting of the Sun’s magnetic field. Such a large buildup and release of energy on the Sun is a rare occurrence, and especially unusual around solar minimum, when the Sun is normally at its quietest.
Electromagnetic activity on the Sun has been known to cause disruptive effects on earth satellites and other devices, and the energy field surrounding the human body has an electromagnetic component which is tuned in to electrical waves that are all around us. Events like this are a fascinating way to look at the connection between the Sun’s energy and our own electrical fields.
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