|
A comet falls into the sun, which then ejects a billion tons of mass. Click on the image above to see the movie.
This movie/video is from the Space Weather website, May 12, 2011.
Here, also from SpaceWeather.com, is a two-second video of the same billion-ton coronal
mass ejection.
CME stands for "coronal mass ejection." Here's the May 12 write-up from Spaceweather.com:
"A comet goes in; a CME comes out. Coincidence? Probably, yes, the sequence was coincidental. The comet disintegrated as much as a million kilometers
above the stellar surface. There's no known way that the wispy, vaporous remains of a relatively lightweight comet could cause a billion-ton cloud of
hot plasma to fly away from the sun at 400 km/s (the observed speed of the CME). Moreover, NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory photographed the eruption
that did propel the CME into space. There's no comet in the field of view of this must-see movie."
That speed, 400 km/second, is nearly a million miles per hour. At that speed, the ejected material would take about
a hundred hours to reach the earth -- if it were aimed in our direction.
The energy expended in such a billion-ton ejection is roughly equivalent to all the energy that all human beings
could use at our present rate in 200 years.
Bob
Global warming is the increase in the average temperature of Earth's near-surface air
and oceans since the mid-20th century and its projected continuation -- Wikipedia.
|
