Sunspots are getting bigger and more numerous.
This can only mean the end of the world.
Or, y’know, business as usual.
It’s a toss up.
Hey there stargazers and soothsayers, Julian here for DNews.
The Sun is a mass of incandescent gas, a gigantic nuclear furnace, everyone knows that.
But there’s a lot more going on than just slamming hydrogen together, not that that
isn’t pretty sweet on it’s own.
The Sun, like most celestial bodies, is also rotating on an axis.
Big deal right?
Well the cool part is, it’s not all rotating at the same speed.
Because the exterior of the sun isn’t a solid crust like Earth’s, the equator of
the sun is actually spinning much faster than the poles.
If you were standing on the Sun’s equator you would make a trip around it in 25 days,
whereas if you were standing by the poles it would take 36 days to make a revolution.
That’s kind of like standing on Panama and surfing it until you’re just south of Russia
12 hours later.
And when you factor in that the Sun’s plasma is linked to it’s magnetic field, things
get twisted.
Literally.
After a while the magnetic field lines look like your headphones after you left them in
your pocket.
And then put your pants through the dryer.
The magnetic field in turn has an effect on the convection layer of the Sun, meaning some
areas don’t get piping hot 5,500 degrees celsius plasma from the sun’s interior,
and the stagnating plasma on the surface cools to a frigid 2,700 to 4,200 degrees celsius.
These areas are still giving off light, but compared to the rest of the sun they look
black.
They’re what we call Sun Spots.
And because they’re areas of intense magnetic twistification, Sun Spots tend to be where
solar flares and coronal mass ejections originate.
Basically the magnetic field lines snap, and sling matter and electromagnetic radiation
and massive amounts of energy off into space.
And pretty soon, a great big sun spot is going to be pointing right at us.
The sexily named AR2192 has been getting bigger and bigger as it rotates towards us.
It’s solar flares are crossing the threshold to the X class, meaning they have the potential
to briefly knock out radio communication planet-wide and I bet you anything it happens during the
World Series.
If you watched the partial solar eclipse yesterday you could even see it with the naked eye (Side
note: DO NOT watch a solar eclipse with the naked eye).
Surely this is the harbinger of doom!
Well, not really, sunspots are on an 11 year cycle.
They get bigger and more numerous for a while and then the magnetic field untangles itself
and we do it all over again.
Now if only the same trick worked for those headphones.
If you want to find out what happens when the Earth’s magnetic fields reverse, I’d
like to draw you to Tara’s video down here.
Is there another apocalyptic scenario you want us to look into?
Let us know in the comments.
Thanks for watching DNews… or if you watched the eclipse unprotected, thanks for listening!