09-23-2015, 12:48 AM
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