Here’s something you don’t see every day: a tornado on the
surface of the sun. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory posted
this stunning video, which shows the sun’s plasma sliding and
spinning around in the star’s magnetic fields for 30 hours
earlier this month. Terry Kucera, a solar physicist with NASA’s
Goddard Space Flight Center,Â told Fox NewsÂ that the tornado
might be as large as the Earth itself and have gusts up to
300,000 miles per hour. By comparison, the strongest tornadoes
on earth, F5 storms, clock wind speeds at a relatively paltry
(though incredibly destructive) 300 mph. The sun is an extremely
active star, regularly spitting radiation and atomic particles
into space. This space weather has direct impacts here on Earth,
likeÂ forcing the rerouting of planesÂ andlighting up the
auroras. (Andrew Prince is a producer on NPR’s Science Desk.)
This post was submitted by Andrew Prince / NPR.