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Herringbones

20 February 2019
Electromagnetism

Robert sent in several links. The first one is to www.everythingselectric.com/eie-100/ …. and concerns the large storms seen  erupting on the Sun recently, flinging material at speeds of over 3000kms a second, a massive shock wave, and phenomena known as herringbones. The shape of the fish skeleton emerged when they plotted the frequencies of radio waves as a CME evolved (more than one CME was studied). The spine is a kind of emission at a constant frequency. The verticle offshoot bones on either side were sudden bursts of radiation at a much wider range of frequencies. Herringbones have been found in the Sun's radio wave entrails before. Morason and his team pinned down the origin of the radiation bursts. To their surprise the bones were being created in three different locations, on the sides of the CME.

Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) are flowing currents of ionised plasma, we are told. Are they a plasmoid? Flares are caused by turbulence in the plasma that makes up the Sun. Plasma is a gas that is so hot that electrons begin to be stripped from the atoms, forming a mixture of charged particles. As it swirls around in the Sun the charged particles create magnetic fields. When the turbulence rises in amplitude the magnetic field lines get contorted and unstable (but not of course always) – and the author of the piece compares it to a tightly sprung coiled spring. During magnetic reconnection events the tangled magnetic field seem to rearrange – relieving a lot of trapped energy. It is this energy that powers the flow and propels plasma into space fo form the CME. The Sun is therefore an active star that can launch large eruptions of magnetised plasma into the heliosphere. The relationship between CME expansion, shocks, and particle connection is not well understood (which is a fair comment). Over at https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/02/20/solar-tadpole-like-jets-seen-with… … and the comments include those of solar scientist Lief Svalgard.

At https://astronomynow.com/2019/02/19/new-radio-map-reveals-huge-number-of… … a new sky array by a Low Frequency Array space telescope system has scanned a quarter of the northern sky. It has found 300,000 radio sources, almost  all from undetectable galaxies.

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