Every so often, the sun burps. But when the sun burps, it does so with the power of 20 million nuclear bombs. These hiccups are known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs)—powerful eruptions near the surface of the sun in the corona. The resulting shocks ripple through the solar system and can interrupt satellites and power grids on Earth. During a CME, enormous bubbles of super heated gas—called plasma—are ejected from the sun. Over the course of several hours, one billion tons of material are lifted off the sun’s surface and accelerated to speeds of one million miles per hour. (A jet moving that fast could get you from Los Angeles to New York in 18 seconds.) This can happen several times a day when the sun is most active. During its quieter periods, CMEs occur only once every five days. The underlying cause of CMEs is not well understood. Astronomers agree, however, that the sun’s magnetic field plays a major role. Because the sun is a fluid, disturbances tend to twist the magnetic field into complex contortions. Twist the field too much, and it kinks—much like a phone cord or toy Slinky. These kinks snap the magnetic field and can possibly drive vast amounts of plasma into space. Every so often, an eruption is aimed right at us. When the plasma cloud hits our planet, a geomagnetic storm follows. The shock wave of charged particles compresses the Earth’s day side magnetic field while the night side gets stretched out. Like an elongated rubber band, the Earth's magnetic field eventually snaps back with the same amount of energy as a bolt of lightening. The onslaught of charged particles and the temporary restructuring of the Earth’s magnetic field has effects we can actually see. Auroral lights, usually only seen near the poles, can drift to lower latitudes and become more brilliant. The disturbance of the magnetic field can also expose Earth to deadly cosmic rays. The atmosphere still provides enough protection for everyone on the ground. But astronauts in space may receive deadly high doses of radiation. During a solar storm in 1989, cosmonauts aboard the Mir space station received their maximum yearly radiation dose in just a few hours! The CME of 1859, known as the Carrington Event, after amateur astronomer Richard Carrington who observed the flares that triggered the storm, recorded it as the most powerful CME storm ever recorded on Earth. Aurora were observed as far south as Hawai’i and the Caribbean. Witnesses at higher latitudes (Alaska, Canada, Russia) reported being able to read newspapers by the light of the aurora alone. Telegraph networks around the globe catastrophically failed; operators received shocks and telegraph paper caught on fire. A repeat of this type of Carrington Event today would be devastating to much of our technology. A CME recorded by the SOHO satellite in 2000 shows a billion tons of plasma launched two million kilometers off the surface of the sun! The dark area in the middle of the image is from a disk used to block out the light of the sun. The white circle outlines the location of the sun’s surface. Credit: SOHO (NASA/ESA The Aurora is very beautiful, but how are they made? The bright dancing lights of the aurora are actually collisions between electrically charged particles from the sun that enter the earth's atmosphere from a CME event or a solar storm. The lights are seen above the magnetic poles of the northern and southern hemispheres. They are known as 'Aurora borealis' in the north and 'Aurora australis' in the south.
The temperature above the surface of the sun in the corona is millions of degrees Celsius. At this temperature, collisions between gas molecules are frequent and explosive. Free electrons and protons are thrown from the sun's atmosphere by the rotation of the sun and escape through holes in the sun's magnetic field. Blown towards the earth by the solar wind, the charged particles are largely deflected by the earth's magnetic field. However, the earth's magnetic field is weaker at the poles and therefore some particles enter the earth's atmosphere and collide with gas particles in our atmosphere. These collisions make light that we see as the dancing lights of the north (and the south) poles Kind of scary that something so destructive (a CME) can appear so beautiful to us.
21 Comments
jenna
2/22/2017 03:50:38 pm
wow that is really cool
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2/22/2017 03:57:43 pm
wow the pictures are really amazing!!!!:););) also the CME is really cool too!!!:):)
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Branden Jones
2/22/2017 04:35:44 pm
LOL im from last year
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steve roper
2/22/2017 05:08:10 pm
really cool pictures i'm hopeing i did good on my report
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Katelyn Ashton
2/22/2017 05:12:21 pm
Coronal mass ejections look so cool when they are not effecting earth.
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ADDIE J
2/22/2017 05:43:41 pm
COOL PICS!
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Emmalee
2/22/2017 05:49:07 pm
I like the pictures a lot!
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Zane
2/22/2017 09:52:59 pm
Dang, I wish i could burp like the sun.(but thats not a very good wish)
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p with arker
2/22/2017 07:02:55 pm
awesome and its my sisters b-day
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sinjin belnap
2/22/2017 09:05:46 pm
LOVED IT!!
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JAXON BUNKER
2/22/2017 09:48:51 pm
THOSE PICTURES ARE REALLY COOL!
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Zane
2/22/2017 09:54:03 pm
hello again :p
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Paige
2/22/2017 10:08:25 pm
Wow I love all of the pictures but my favorite one was the first one because it is movinujg and shows how the CME actually looks.I also think that the CME'S are very cool and also very interesting!!
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Addi
2/22/2017 11:12:22 pm
Hu... I never really knew what coronal mass ejections were. Thx mrs Taylor!
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Tabitha
2/23/2017 05:52:43 am
The first video picture showed a mini cme before the giant exploding one.I think that's cool.
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Grant
2/23/2017 07:04:04 am
REALLY COOL PICTURES. I'm with Zane.
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BRADY a.k.a the best around
2/23/2017 07:05:22 am
wow.
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Zaya
2/23/2017 07:32:26 am
Coronal mass ejections are super cool, but very scary!
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Avery
2/23/2017 07:33:11 am
The CME's are really cool. I also love the pictures!
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Mrs. TaylorI love science! Everything about the world is interesting and never boring. I love to study plants, animals, insects, and people. My favorite subjects are my students who are the most unique organisms on the planet! Categories |