Psychedelic Sunspot Video Useful for Science, Too
The beautiful virtual sunspot (see video below) was built using new observations about the structure of the sun. It represents an area 31,000 miles by 62,000 miles to a depth of 3,700 miles. Scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research used a wealth of equations that describe the interactions of particles in the environment to calculate the dynamics of the sunspot at 1.8 billion individual points.
Sunspots, which
wax and wane in roughly 11-year cycles, eject massive amounts of plasma into the solar system, sometimes causing disruptions of terrestrial communications and power grid infrastructure. We’ve been studying them for a 100 years
The normal cycle appeared to have been disrupted, which would have required a major rethink of the sun’s internal dynamics.
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