An eruption in July created a giant fountain of plasma many times the size of Earth.
Posted 02.21.2013 at 1:29 pm
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The rare event captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory last July is known as "coronal rain." It starts when a solar eruption spews plasma from the surface of the sun high up into the star's atmosphere; then, as the material cools and condenses, the charged particles that make up the plasma get trapped in the star's magnetic fields, and are shuttled along the magnetic field lines back to the sun's surface. The 90,000-degree plasma lights up the strange motions and structures within the otherwise invisible magnetic fields.
[NASA]
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So when are we gonna take a sample of the field strength in one of those loops? 40-50 years? That's going to be one helluva magnet. I want one. Nah, who am I kiddin? I want a bunch of em.
@quasi the actual strength of the magnetic field wouldn't have to be very strong, it would just have to occupy a very large area kind of like the earth's magnetic field; it isn't very strong, less than a Tesla, yet it's literally the closest biggest magnet that we have on hand so to speak. the strength of a magnetic field like this wouldn't have to be very big in order to start causing the plasma to filament, in fact it would only need to cause an electric current within the plasma in order to make the fine lines that you see it devolve into. the strength of the magnetic field though is in the sheer size of the magnetic field, if you noticed they did a comparison of the earth to scale, the actual event was easily twice the size of earth, so that means that following the inverse square law, you have a magnetic field roughly four times the strength of the earth's assuming that the generation of the magnetic field is the same.
in the end that plasma is traveling an absurd distance very quickly, showing to scale it's traveling the distance of the diameter of the earth in roughly a few seconds if the speed of the film is real time.
to mars or bust!