Astronomers with NASA are rethinking everything they know about solar explosions, and here’s why.
“On August 1, 2010, an entire hemisphere of the sun erupted,” NASA scientists explained Monday. “Filaments of magnetism snapped and exploded, shock waves raced across the stellar surface, billion-ton clouds of hot gas billowed into space. Astronomers knew they had witnessed something big.”
Since then, researchers have been puzzling over what happened during the massive eruption. The was recorded in detail by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory and twin STEREO spacecraft, meaning there was ample data to pour over.
At a press conference in San Francisco Monday, they said that data showed solar eruptions aren’t as simple as they once thought.
Essentially, solar storms aren’t self-contained, the researchers said. Explosions are connected by magnetism, meaning flares, tsunamis and massive solar ejections can happen at once — and not necessarily in the same area.
“To predict eruptions we can no longer focus on the magnetic fields of isolated active regions, we have to know the surface magnetic field of practically the entire sun,” said solar physicist Alan Title.
That’s quite an equation. But even with that discovery, researchers said they’re still trying to figure out the cause and effect of multiple solar events. The big question now: Was August’s storm a chain reaction, or did every event happen at once because of a change in the sun’s magnetic field?
For more on the discovery and a video of the solar storm, visit NASA’s website.