Footage From The First-Ever Probe to Touch The Sun

That video makes as much sense as playing golf on the moon, keep up the good work.

originally posted by: scraedtosleep
a reply to: gortex

Super cool just for the fact that humans can do this. I haven't read anything about why though?

What do they hope to learn or is this just an experiment?

The problem called the "coronal heating problem" has been partially solved, but hopefully Parker solar probe will help provide the rest of the solution to the mystery:

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe and the Curious Case of the Hot Corona

Something mysterious is going on at the Sun. In defiance of all logic, its atmosphere gets much, much hotter the farther it stretches from the Sun’s blazing surface.

Temperatures in the corona — the tenuous, outermost layer of the solar atmosphere — spike upwards of 2 million degrees Fahrenheit, while just 1,000 miles below, the underlying surface simmers at a balmy 10,000 F. How the Sun manages this feat remains one of the greatest unanswered questions in astrophysics; scientists call it the coronal heating problem. A new, landmark mission, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe — scheduled to launch no earlier than Aug. 11, 2018 — will fly through the corona itself, seeking clues to its behavior and offering the chance for scientists to solve this mystery.

That is not the sole mission of course, but it's an intriguing mystery.

Imagine if you built a campfire, and stood beside it on a cold night to feel its warmth. Then you walk away from the campfire, and instead of measuring colder temperatures, you measure higher temperatures...that doesn't happen with campfires of course but it does happen with the sun's corona so it would be nice to have a better understanding of why. It's probably got something to do with the strong electromagnetic fields around the sun, something you don't get around campfires.

a reply to: gortex

Reminds me a bit of driving through a snow storm w/ my high beams on...

Initiate Warp Drive!

Thats really cool or Hot Thanks for the Link

originally posted by: gortex
This is what it's like to touch the Sun.

The footage was taken by NASA's Parker Solar Probe over the period of 4 days as it swooped into the Sun's corona.

So, what are we actually looking at? These images were captured by the Parker probe's WISPR (Wide-field Imager for Solar Probe) instrument.

All of those streaks the probe is zooming through are coronal streamers – massive loops of electrically charged gas and plasma that connect two regions of opposite polarity on the Sun. They're extended out by the solar wind and they glow like this because they're filled with electrons.

These streamers, also known as helmet streamers, are usually only visible from Earth during an eclipse – but in the footage they're seen as the spacecraft flies above and below them inside the corona.

But that's not all there is to gape at in the Parker time lapse. Take another look and you may notice there are planets visible in the background – including Earth!
www.sciencealert.com...

If you have time take a look at the screen shots in the article that explain what is shown in the footage , cool stuff.

As a hypothetical:

I bet if you strapped a nuke, or many small nukes, maybe even just a # ton of hydrogen... to this thing and exploded it or let it burn up in the sun chances are Al Gore would suddenly become the world's wisest scientist and most prayed to religious prophet Circa 2040 by a people living in a high altitude mountain town located in Rocky Mountain High RV Park, which itself is also found in South Park, CO.

It's fake. It will not touch the Sun. The closest it will get in 2025 - some 4 million miles or 9 solar radii

a reply to: gortex

What an incredible Christmas present!

Thanks for posting this, Gortex

I did not think we had anything that could come come close to the SUN without burning up..

a reply to: Arbitrageur

You and your “magnetic universe” theory!!

Big bang, magnetic pockets, particles cool, we get regular matter, early stars explode, more matter, and the magnetic fields hold the universe from interacting with the other universes…

We are magnetic slaves!!

🧲

(/tongue in check!! )

Surely they had the probe blasting this from insulated speakers as it plummeted…

Now that was pretty damn funnya reply to: UpThenDown

originally posted by: UpThenDown
a reply to: gortex

thanks man, for some reason i cant save the video on youtube to my space folder, seems bizarre that the function is not available

TubeMate(apk and for android and .exe for Windows)

I'm curious to know what was those two images at the end of the video? Where it shows one object passing in front of another one? a reply to: gortex

a reply to: Arbitrageur

That is really interesting. I had heard that the heat is greater farther away but I never really thought about how weird that is.

That was cool alright and yeah, you can see Earth flying in the background.... fast little sucker isn't it... must be on boosters.