Main | Thursday, March 29, 2012

NASA Films Solar Tornado

Amazing and cool.
A giant solar tornado - five times the Earth's diameter - swirling at incredible speed of some 186,000 mph has been captured on video by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. ­This is the first time a giant solar twister has been caught on video. Solar tornadoes, known as solar prominences, are shaped by the sun's magnetic field and often occur during coronal mass ejections -- huge explosions of solar plasma. The speed of swirling solar gases can sometimes reach several thousand miles per hour.
Five entire Earths could fit inside that twister? Yikes.

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