Giant Solar Tsunami Viewed from NASA’s STERO Spacecraft
Only earthquakes can make a huge tsunami waves on the oceans, a flare can cause a tsunami on the Sun’s surface and it did on May 19, 2007. The event was captured by NASA’s twin Stereo spacecraft and was observed by a team at Trinity College, Dublin.The tsunami waves generated by the explosions can travel at over a million kilometers per hour.
The event lasted for about 35 minutes and ultimatelycovered almost the full disk of the Sun.“The energy released in these explosions is phenomenal, about two billion times the annual world energy consumption in just a fraction of a second,” stated Long.
A previous observation of a solar tsunami was recorded by the SOHO spacecraft almost a decade ago but these images were misleading to scientists. Tsunamis on the Sun should have had phenomenal speed due to the influence of the Sun’s magnetic field on the solar material making the waves magneto-acoustical in nature. Many people worry about solar tsunami because they afraid the solar tsunami will make a an affect to Earth. With the improved capabilities of the Stereo’s Extreme Ultraviolent Imager (EUVI) instruments they in fact measured speeds in agreement with the theory. In addition, by monitoring the Sun at four wavelengths which penetrate different layers of the Sun’s atmosphere, astronomers could see how the wave moved vertically as well as horizontally.