8.30.2007
9 million MPH waves are emanating from the sun
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Scientists have detected waves following magnetic lines that radiate from the sun at a velocity of 9 million miles per hour.
From the article:
Like a wave traveling along a string, Alfven waves run along the sun's magnetic field lines and reach deep into space. While astrophysicists have identified the waves far away from the sun, they've never been detected close to our star-the ripples were too small and too fast to spot.
If you could surf this wave and harness its force, at such a speed, it would take only 10 hours to reach the sun from the earth and 1 minute and 45 seconds to reach the moon; going to Mars from the earth would be about the duration of a flight to Hawaii.
Christened the alfven waves, scientists at the National Solar Observatory's Sacramento Peak Observatory in New Mexico believe they are the mechanism that transfers energy from the sun to the Corona, or sun's atmosphere, which heats up to millions of degrees - far hotter than the sun's surface.
Read the original postulation of Hannes Alfven (1942) towards a theory of this class of electromagnetic waves at Nature.com
Labels: alfvenwaves, science
