D-Bone
Dec 11th '06, 11:03 AM
A solar tsunami has been caught in the act of rolling across the face of the sun. The unusual shock wave, clocked at about 700,000 miles per hour, was triggered by a huge Dec. 6 flare that erupted from a rowdy Earth-sized sunspot during what is otherwise a relatively quiet time for the sun.
"This is clearly a unique event," said Alexei Pevtsov, a solar physicist at NASA headquarters. "I don't think we've ever seen a wave of that magnitude."
Normally when shock waves are seen on the sun, they tend to be short-lived, narrowly directed and seen in the super hot outer "corona" of the sun's atmosphere, he said.
Read More: http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2006/12/11/tsunami_spa.html?category=space&guid=20061211094500&dcitc=w19-502-ak-0000
"This is clearly a unique event," said Alexei Pevtsov, a solar physicist at NASA headquarters. "I don't think we've ever seen a wave of that magnitude."
Normally when shock waves are seen on the sun, they tend to be short-lived, narrowly directed and seen in the super hot outer "corona" of the sun's atmosphere, he said.
Read More: http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2006/12/11/tsunami_spa.html?category=space&guid=20061211094500&dcitc=w19-502-ak-0000