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There’s something strange going on with our sun

NASA

There’s something strange happening on the surface of our sun.

NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) has noticed an ominous gulf known as a coronal hole on the star’s upper half – an area that is darker, colder and lower in density than normal.

The growing spot could cover up to a quarter of the sun’s surface as the coronal hole spreads across our parent star.

“Coronal holes are low-density regions of the sun’s atmosphere, known as the corona,” NASA explained.

“Because they contain little solar material, they have lower temperatures and thus appear much darker than their surroundings.”

And as the gap grows, the sun’s magnetic field is allowing heat from the star to escape into space.

The high-speed winds responsible for the sun’s coronal holes send the star’s particles off at speeds three times faster than solar wind.

Watch NASA’s footage of the coronal hole:

How does it affect Earthlings?

Before you head for the shelter and start planning for the apocalypse, or start spending your savings on woolly jumpers in preparation for a new ice age, NASA has assured us that despite the stream of heated particles flying into the atmosphere, the anomaly poses no real risk to Earth.

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The health of our sun has been an obsession for man for centuries. Photo: Fox Searchlight Pictures

“While it’s unclear what causes coronal holes, they correlate to areas on the sun where magnetic fields soar up and away, without looping back down to the surface, as they do elsewhere,” NASA said.

So it appears that this troubling development is just a slightly cooler part of the enormous, unimaginably hot ball of gas that sits at the centre of our solar system.

“These coronal holes are important to understanding the space environment around Earth through which our technology and astronauts travel,” NASA said.

“Coronal holes are visible in certain types of extreme ultraviolet light, which is typically invisible to our eyes, but is colorised here in purple for easy viewing.”

The $US800 million SDO project was launched in 2010 with the mission of helping NASA better understand both the sun and its influence on both Earth and the space surrounding it.

The SDO has been observing coronal holes and the sun itself for six years and in that time it has witnessed and recorded an array of solar features and coronal holes.

In October last year, NASA released images recorded by the SDO that showed a coronal hole in the same area of the sun as the latest coronal footage.

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Older footage shows a much smaller hole in the same area. Photo: NASA

Last October’s coronal hole was roughly the size of 50 Earths, but was still much smaller than the current hole.

The latest coronal hole footage shows an anomaly that covers almost half of the sun’s visible disk and between 10 and 20 per cent of the sun’s actual surface area.

Conspiracy!

Despite the assurances, there are some people convinced the ‘the end is nigh’ and various websites are claiming there is a conspiracy and a cover-up.

Conspiracy theorists are less convinced that the gigantic coronal hole is benign, rather asking if it could be a sign that the sun is disintegrating.

“Don’t worry they say” and “we all die”.

Which may be the reason NASA disabled comments on the last video it published of a coronal hole.

 

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