Saturday, February 18, 2012

Tornado's On the Sun?

A NASA spacecraft captured a terrific video of, apparently, tornadoes on the sun's surface! The tornadoes usually last for about ten minutes. They happen on the suns poles and are jets of gas erupting from the sun. Now this isn't any big news for most scientists, the big news is that the jets of gas are rotating. And no, it's not because of wind, the north and south poles are pulling against charged magnetic particles on the sun back and forth, creating a spinning mass of plasma that tracks along strands of magnetic field lines, as NASA explained. It is really quite an amazing sight to see.
 

As you can see, words can't describe it. These tornado's are almost a thousand times faster than a tornado on earth, and are huge. Not to mention that it's a fire tornado that's about 15,000 degrees Fahrenheit, relatively cold for the sun.


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