You must have recently heard that a part of Sun Broke Off. Astronomers saw a huge plasma filament erupt from the Sun, surprisingly pulling itself apart. And after getting detached, it furiously rotated till it reached the star’s North pole, creating a terrifying vortex, just like a gigantic tornado. But how is it possible for a solar chunk to break apart??
What’s the physics behind this intriguing event?? Does it mean a solar tsunami is on the way to hit our planet??? There are some critical questions and to answer them let’s look at what happens in the Sun🌞.
Every eleven years, the sun’s activity undergoes dramatic changes due to magnetic field reversal. The magnetic poles flip their position, meaning the north becomes south, and the south becomes north. This period of eleven years is known as the solar cycle. In one complete cycle, the Sun transforms into a roaring beast, from being relatively quiet and peaceful at times. At its peak activity, the Sun is stormy and is accompanied by an increase in the number of sunspots and frequency of solar flames and prominences. These three terms are essential to understand what happened to the Sun.
Sunspots are regions with strong magnetic fields and relatively low temperatures. They can have a temperature of about 3526.85 degrees (3800 Kelvin). That’s about 2000 degrees (2000 kelvin) cooler than the surrounding photospheric temperature. Because of this sunspots appear darker than the bright photospheric background. On the other hand, a solar flare represents an intense eruption of electromagnetic radiation in the Sun’s atmosphere. However, besides enhanced sunspots and solar flares, another important feature that appears during peak activity is solar prominence. Suppose plasma flows along the loop of the Sun’s magnetic field from one sunspot to another sunspot. In that case, it forms a glowing arch that reaches thousands of kilometers into the Sun’s atmosphere creating a solar prominence.
As the internal dynamo of the Sun generates a magnetic field, the plasma in prominences twists along the magnetic field lines. Over time, the twisted magnetic field structure becomes unstable forming an erupting structure. As a result, we see outward bursts of plasma.
The most surprising thing in the latest solar prominence observation is how the material broke off. The ejected material circled the pole at 60 degrees latitude for about 8 hours at 96 km/s. The dynamic event highlighting a part of the Sun getting torn apart was captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamic Observatory on February 2. Where the scientist SCOTT MCINTOSH says that Bits of the sun of various sizes break off all the time. You know, the sun’s outer atmosphere is like a churning, bubbling cauldron, right? And occasionally, stuff heats and cools and gets ejected out of the atmosphere. Some of it falls back down and cools, and some of it goes off into interplanetary space. This is nothing to be alarmed about.
The Sun undergoes activity cycles every 11 or so years, from relatively quiet and peaceful, to absolutely rambunctious. These cycles coincide with fluctuations in the solar magnetic field. When the magnetic field is at its weakest at the poles, the Sun’s magnetic poles switch places, and the polarity of the magnetic field reverses. This is when the Sun is at its most active, known as solar maximum.
Solar physicist Scott McIntosh of the US National Center for Atmospheric Research – who has been observing the Sun for decades trying to understand its cycles – told Space.com that he had never seen a “vortex” like the one that occurred when a piece of the prominence broke away and was whipped into the solar atmosphere. We’ll have to wait to find out more about the strange event. Scientists are no doubt even now analyzing the wealth of data we have from round-the-clock solar observatories, so hopefully, that wait won’t be too long.
Because the solar poles are difficult to observe, the findings should be very interesting. Meanwhile, the predictions of McIntosh and his team more closely match the observed solar cycle to date than any other prediction
BUT BUT BUT!! You should know this, these solar waves can cause serious harm to earth here. One solar flare can cause a blackout in the entire world, with no electricity, and no computers. all the microchips in our devices would get destroyed by this solar storm. We don’t even have an advanced shield that would protect us from it. And you know even one minute without the internet humans can survive today….. Think about it!!!
