The European Space Agency’sSolar Orbiterhas captured a stunning phenomenon take up piazza across the airfoil of the Sun . It may see like a snake in the grass slithering from one side of the Sun to the other , but it ’s actually a tube of cool atmospheric gases shooting through the Sun ’s magnetic field – and it may have been the harbinger for a much more powerful solar upshot .
Did you ssssssssee it ?
All the gas in the atmosphere of the Sun is plasm , because it is over a million degrees , so electrons are ripped from their particle . But there are hotter feature and tank features , like the snake . The nerveless plasma accompany asolar filament , an arc of plasm that can organise across the surface of the Sun connect two removed parts of the Sun .
“ You ’re start plasma flowing from one side to the other but the magnetic field is really twisted . So you ’re getting this change in direction because we ’re looking down on a twisted structure , ” David Long , who is heading up the probe into the phenomenon , said in astatement .
The point of line of descent of the ophidian and the filament then experience a major eruption . These are sleep with ascoronal mass ejectionsand when they occur a Brobdingnagian amount of plasma is thrown into space . If these hit the Earth , they can get geomagnetic storms .
The location of the snake , filament , and coronal mass ejection being one and the same is too much of a coincidence , so the team is investigating how the three are relate . Solar Orbiter ’s Energetic Particle Detector was active during the coronal batch ejection and read the most intense solar energetic particles event ever record by the instrument so far .
As luck would have it , NASA ’s Parker Solar Probewas also swept over by the eruption provide an ‘ upstream ’ horizon of the event as it orbits closer to the Sun , meaning it could quantify the extravasation too . The two ballistic capsule have fantastic synergism and NASA is an participating collaborator in Solar Orbiter , so it will be interesting to see the results of the two solar crafts combined .
