SCIENCE IN THE NEWS DAILY
Giant Tornadoes Seen Erupting From the Sun
from National Geographic News
The sun produces giant tornado-like jets that stretch thousands of miles into space, new satellite data shows. The solar tornadoes typically last about ten minutes and occur near the sun's poles.
"These solar tornadoes are almost a thousand times faster than a terrestrial tornado and are very big," said Spiros Patsourakos, a researcher at George Mason University.
Scientists have known since the 1990s that jets of gas wider than North America were erupting from the sun's poles, but it is only now that they discovered these jets are rotating. That's because a new pair of NASA satellites called STEREO allowed the features to be observed from two directions at once, revealing their three-dimensional structures.
Read more ...
Science in the Media
Magazines and Web Sites:
The Science-Media Intersection:
... for Sigma Xi SmartBrief, a free daily summary of the latest news in scientific research, delivered straight to your in-box. Each story is summarized concisely and linked directly to the original source for further reading.
Click here to subscribe.
Subscribe to Our Content!
Visit our RSS Feeds page to choose among 13 customized feeds, or create a free My AmSci account to request an email notice whenever a specified author, department or discipline appears online.