More Surf Up in the Cosmos

[August West]

This reminded me of the opening of a disaster movie for some reason,

SFGate - Amazing formations on the surface of the sun captivate astronomers

Interesting pics, probably better quality available elsewhere.

[pdq]

These kind of pics are always subtly disquieting to me. We think of the sun as that nice, steady, forever-light-bulb in the sky, and the truth is, it's a seething, uncontrolled thermonuclear inferno.

...granted, one that has been reasonably stable over the last 4 billion years (and for the next few billion, hopefully).

I guess I'll just keep my fingers crossed.

[mrlynn]

pdq wrote:
These kind of pics are always subtly disquieting to me. We think of the sun as that nice, steady, forever-light-bulb in the sky, and the truth is, it's a seething, uncontrolled thermonuclear inferno.

...granted, one that has been reasonably stable over the last 4 billion years (and for the next few billion, hopefully).

I guess I'll just keep my fingers crossed.

Lots of talk in recent years about the dangers of a coronal mass ejection, which could conceivably disrupt or even fry (technical term!) all the electronics on the hemisphere facing the sun, e.g.:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859

only there weren't any electronics back then. . .

/Mr Lynn