Dec. 13, 2010: 1 August 2010 broke a whole hemisphere of the Sun. Torn filaments of magnetism and exploded, shock waves drove billion-ton clouds of gas convection billowed in the area of the stellar surface,. Astronomers knew that she had experienced something great.
It was so great, it may have broken old ideas about solar activity.
"The August 1st event opened really our eyes," Karel Schrijver says lab in Palo Alto, CA. Lockheed Martin solar and Astrophysics "we see that solar storms can get global events, out on scales we play hardly imagine before."
For the last three months, Schrijver works with colleagues Lockheed Martin solar-to-understand title physicist Alan, what happens is during the "great eruption". They had many data: the event was recorded by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory and twin STEREO spacecraft in unprecedented detail. To provide comment with several colleagues present, outlining their results at a press conference today in the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.
Explosions on the Sun are not localized or isolated events, have announced it. Instead, solar activity is connected through magnetism over breathtaking distances. Solar flares, tsunamis, coronal mass Ejections--they all can at a time, hundreds of thousands of miles apart, departing in a concert of dizzyingly complex chaos.
"Predict eruptions we not the isolated active regions can focus more on the magnetic fields" says title, "we need to know the surface magnetic field virtually the entire Sun."
This revelation increases the utilization for space weather forecasters, but it increases also the potential accuracy of their forecasts.
"The whole Sun approach to breakthroughs in the prediction of solar activity, causing" Rodney commented square of NOAA's space weather prediction Center in Boulder, co. "This would in turn improved forecasts for our customers as electricity bietendie could network operators and commercial airlines to ensure measures to protect of their systems and the safety of the passengers and crew."
In a paper, the it for journal of geophysical research (JGR prepared), broke Schrijver and title of the great eruption in more than a dozen major shock waves, flares, filament eruptions and CMEs about 180 degrees of solar length and 28 hours. First seemed there will be a cacophony of disorder, until the events on a map of the Sun magnetic field applied.
Title describes the Eureka! Moment: "we have seen that all events of significant Coronal activity through a comprehensive Separatrices, separators and quasi-Separatrix were linked levels." A "Separatrix" is a magnetic fault zone in which small changes in the surrounding areas can set plasma currents of large electromagnetic storms.
Researchers have long suspected that this kind of magnetic connection is possible. "The concept of the 'benevolent' flares at least three quarter of a century back," she wrote in their paper operated. Sometimes observers of flares go would see by one after the anderen-- like popcorn-but it was not possible to prove a link between them. Arguments in favour of cause and effect were statistical and often full of doubt.
"For this kind of work, SDO, and STEREO game changer," Lika Guhathakurta, NASA says with a Star program scientists life. "Together, the three monitor probe 97% of the Sun, allowing researchers to view connections that could guess them only in the past."
To wit, almost two-thirds of the August event of the Earth was visible from, but all of it could be seen of the SDO STEREO fleet. In addition, magnetic field showed direct links between the various components of the great eruption SDO's measurements of the Sun - no statistics needed.
There remains much to do. "We are still of cause and effect, sorting," says Schrijver. "The event was a large chain reaction where an eruption-bang raised, bang, Bang--one after the other?" "Or some major changes in the sun go all together as a result of global magnetic field?"
Further analysis can still expose the underlying trigger; at the moment, the team still their thoughts to the global nature of the solar activity is packaging. One commenter reminded of the old adage of three blind men, a Elefant--one of feeling the strain, the tail, and another one by pressing of sniff a toenail describes. Studies of the Sun a sunspot at a time may only limit.
"Not all eruptions go global," notes Guhathakurta. "But the global nature of the solar activity no longer can be ignored."
As if the Sun already large enough... was not.
Author: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA
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