5 Million Degree Tornado on the Sun

Here on Earth, we experience several types of whirlwinds — wind vortices — dust devils, steam devils, leaf devils, fire whirls, landspouts, waterspouts, snowspouts, gustnadoes, mountainadoes and of course, tornadoes. Weather, however, is not a strictly Earthly phenomenon and as mankind has explored our celestial neighborhood, scientists have discovered whirlwinds twisting elsewhere but this has got to be the coolest hottest of them all.

Move over Sharknado!



From Space.com:

A giant, swirling plume of superheated plasma churned above the surface of the sun for 40 hours last week while a NASA spacecraft looked on.

NASA's sun-studying Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) captured dramatic time-lapse video of the solar tornado, which raged from Sept. 1 through Sept. 3.

The mass of plasma "was stretched and pulled back and forth by powerfulmagnetic forces but [was] not ripped apart in this sequence," SDO team members wrote in a description of the video. "The temperature of the ionized iron particles observed in this extreme ultraviolet wavelength of light was about 2.8 million degrees C (or 5 million degrees F)."

No estimate on the speed of this particular twister in the sources I've read but in 2011 the SDO captured another solar tornado, that one 5 times the size of the Earth, spinning at a unimaginable 186,000 mph!

Brilliant article, great video! Thanks for sharing that - S&F! 👍🏼

originally posted by: theantediluvian
No estimate on the speed of this particular twister in the sources I've read but in 2011 the SDO captured another solar tornado, that one 5 times the size of the Earth, spinning at a unimaginable 186,000 mph!

I'd say the latest tornado is bigger. The first minute of this video shows the 2011 solar tornado:



Still impressive, but I think the more recent video is more impressive, thanks for posting it.

Feel another Sy-Fy channel movie coming on "Firenado" . Or have they already did that one too ?

Tornadoes are atmospheric wind driven. This is a magnetic vortex of sorts, so although the effect is similar it is not a tornado. I'd have thought Arbitrageur would have pointed that out.

Wow that's outstanding.

dp

a reply to: theantediluvian

What incredible footage. To think of the size of it and the energy involved blows the mind, all dancing on a sphere that keeps us alive.

We are so lucky to be able to observe our sun, so close, beyond the blinding light so many generations have witnessed.

originally posted by: paradoxious
Tornadoes are atmospheric wind driven. This is a magnetic vortex of sorts, so although the effect is similar it is not a tornado. I'd have thought Arbitrageur would have pointed that out.

Thanks for noting I'm usually the first person to complain about dictionary abuse!

However in this case, while I agree that the tornadoes on earth are not magnetically driven and most on the sun are, I have no objection to use of the word "tornado" for either these giant events or the smaller magnetic tornadoes. There are thousands of magnetic tornadoes on the sun at any given time but they aren't this big, and at least for the giant solar tornado in 2012, it was thought to be more closely related to a solar prominence, as noted here:

Magnetic tornadoes as energy channels into the solar corona

In our 2012 Nature article, we report the discovery of abundant 'magnetic tornadoes' above the surface of the Sun. Magnetic tornadoes resemble tornadoes on the Earth but have a magnetic skeleton and are hundreds to thousands times larger in diameter. One such observed tornado occupies the area equivalent of Europe or the USA.
We find that magnetic tornadoes have swirling speeds of many 10,000 km/hour. Magnetic tornadoes transport energy from the Sun's surface into its uppermost layer, the corona, where they contribute to the heating of the Sun's outer atmosphere. Consequently, magnetic tornadoes may well be the crucial missing piece of a long-standing puzzle in astrophysics: the heating of the outer solar and stellar atmospheres.

We estimate that there are as many as 11,000 of these swirling events above the Sun's surface at all times. The discovery has been made possible through state-of-the-art technology, namely the combination of extremely high resolution observations from the Swedish 1-m Solar Telescope located at La Palma [Canary Isl.] with data from the NASA's space-borne Solar Dynamics Observatory....

Please note: The magnetic tornadoes found so far are smaller than the large-scale tornadoes observed with SDO earlier in 2012. We refer to the latter as giant tornadoes to distinguish between them and the (small-scale) magnetic tornadoes. Giant tornadoes seem to be connected to solar prominences while such a connection has not been made for magnetic tornadoes. Both phenomena are currently further investigated.

There are several things to note.

1. This citation is from the prestigious journal "nature" and if they refer to tornadoes I don't see any problem with the term even if their cause is different from the tornadoes on earth.

2. They called event several times larger than the earth a "giant tornado" in their 2012 paper, to distinguish it from the smaller (maybe the size of an entire continent on Earth) magnetic tornadoes which may have different causes.

The latest event only happened a few days ago so I'd rather give the experts some time to analyze the event rather than characterize it prematurely. I'm fine with calling it a solar tornado, or "giant tornado" if the authors of the "nature" article prefer that term, since to me tornado means high winds swirling around a central point, and I find it hard to argue that's not what it is regardless of the cause.

Wait....ionized iron particles?

Seriously if the sun is at the stage of iron, it is a death sentence. How is iron there? Always thought the sun was only halfway into its life cycle. Iron is the end of a star.

originally posted by: TinfoilTP
Wait....ionized iron particles?

Seriously if the sun is at the stage of iron, it is a death sentence. How is iron there? Always thought the sun was only halfway into its life cycle. Iron is the end of a star.

The iron in (or on) the Sun isn't from the fusion processes taking place there. Rather, it's from the stuff expelled by old supernovae that was taken up in the formation of the Sun and the Solar System, including iron in your own body. The Sun itself is simply not massive enough to fuse elements into iron, that's the prerogative of far massive stars:


www.youtube.com...

a reply to: theantediluvian

It's huge. And interesting. Could have done without the music though, why do many youtubers think they are professional music editors? Nice OP.

originally posted by: paradoxious
Tornadoes are atmospheric wind driven. This is a magnetic vortex of sorts, so although the effect is similar it is not a tornado. I'd have thought Arbitrageur would have pointed that out.

see thats where ur wrong. tornados and all spiral formations are driven by magnetic currents.

...nice but nothing like this...


The Sun is not what You think it is....
...no hot surface, only surrounding interacting with something...
... there is no nuclear fusion on the Sun
... no gravity involved


we know nothing by now xx

a reply to: wildespace

your understanding is total SCI-FI or Fantasy xx
as my... cos no one knows by today how it all works, no one ...

maybe those few who keeeeping us as slaves do know... but even that i am not sure about ... let the matrix evolved it self

originally posted by: paradoxious
Tornadoes are atmospheric wind driven. This is a magnetic vortex of sorts, so although the effect is similar it is not a tornado. I'd have thought Arbitrageur would have pointed that out.

IIRC from what I read in 2012, these giant tornadoes are thought to arise from different conditions than those of the thousands of much smaller and shorter lived magnetic tornadoes believed to be swirling around the Sun at any given moment. I'll have to track down a source.

That said, I imagine even the smaller magnetic tornadoes have similar mechanics to whirlwinds/cyclones on Earth; likely involving a velocity gradient to start the rotation and thermal gradient to shift the axis so that it's perpendicular to the surface. This would be analogous to the roles wind shear and up drafts play in the conventional tornadoes.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

... and there's the source I was looking for. Thanks for posting that.

originally posted by: theantediluvian
That said, I imagine even the smaller magnetic tornadoes have similar mechanics to whirlwinds/cyclones on Earth; likely involving a velocity gradient to start the rotation and thermal gradient to shift the axis so that it's perpendicular to the surface. This would be analogous to the roles wind shear and up drafts play in the conventional tornadoes.

I don't want to draw too many parallels to Earth tornadoes, but I think high winds swirling around a central point is enough.

The thermal gradient might actually be reversed where higher altitudes are colder on Earth but hotter on the sun.

originally posted by: theantediluvian
a reply to: Arbitrageur

... and there's the source I was looking for. Thanks for posting that.

You're welcome, I found it informative. I missed that in 2012 and didn't realize there were about 11,000 of the smaller ("only" the size of Europe) magnetic tornadoes on the sun, that's a lot!

originally posted by: ZakOlongapo
no one knows by today how it all works, no one ...

Correct, but some know more, and others know less. I agree that nobody knows how it all works. That doesn't mean we know nothing, we do know some things.

a reply to: theantediluvian

5 Million Degree Tornado on the Sun

It's planet X everyone run for the hills....

Sorry couldn't resist.

Thanks for this as the sun is an always changing entity that you never know what you will see happen with it.

Truly Amazing...

Dancing on the star