NASA Releases 3D Images of the Sun

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"A close-up of loops in a magnetic active region is shown in this false color image taken December 4, 2006."

NASA released the first three-dimensional images of the sun Monday, saying the photos taken from twin spacecraft may lead to better predictions of solar eruptions that can affect communications and power lines on Earth.

"The first reaction was 'Great, the instruments work,' but beyond that the first reaction was 'Wow!'" scientist Simon Plunkett said as he explained the images to a room full of journalists and scientists wearing 3D glasses.

The images from the STEREO spacecraft (for Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory) are available on the Internet and at museums and science centers nationwide.

The twin spacecraft, launched in October, are orbiting the Sun, one slightly ahead of the Earth and one behind. The separation, just like the distance between our two eyes, provides the depth perception that allows the 3D images to be obtained.

That depth perception is also particularly helpful for studying a type of solar eruption called a coronal mass ejection. Along with overloading power lines and disrupting satellite communications, the eruptions can endanger astronauts on spacewalks. Scientists would like to improve predictions of the arrival time from the current day or so to a few hours, said Russell Howard, principal investigator for the Naval Research Laboratory project.

STEREO program scientist Madhulika Guhathakurta said scientists have until now been "modeling in the dark" when it came to predicting solar storms. The twin spacecraft give researchers the vantage point to "provide the observations needed to validate the models."

The sun has been relatively quiet since the launch, so STEREO scientists have not predicted the arrival of any storms yet, Plunkett said.

The eruptions — also called solar flares — typically blow a billion tons of the sun's atmosphere into space at a speed of 1 million mph. Besides power and communications problems, the phenomenon is responsible for the northern lights, or aurora borealis, the luminous display of lights seen in the upper latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere.

STEREO scientist Michael Kaiser said scientists would like to be able to predict solar disturbances, just as meteorologists are able to predict hurricane formation.

"We'd like to do the same thing with solar storms," Kaiser said. "We aren't quite there yet."

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Source: Yahoo! News

[Q Can Fix IT]

if superman, whose species evolved under a red sun, was granted great powers due to the radiation properties of a yellow sun and an oxygen atmosphere, would the same thing happen to a human who visits a planet orbiting a blue sun, would a piece of earth rock exposed to a cataclysmic nuclear explosion matching the radiation frequency of our yellow sun be like kryptonite to that human?

the order of suns from coolest to hottest /smallest to biggest are white, red, yellow, blue.

in a solar system with a red sun, the planet most likely to support life would have to be closer to that sun than earth is to ours. so if earth and mars have stable temperatures, (stable enough to support life through a cycle between day and night) thats the third and fourth planet, then a red suns life bearing planets, would be the first and second planets, a blue sun would sustain life on it's fifth, sixth and maybe even the seventh planet.

i plan to test this theory by going to a planet with a blue sun; anyone want to come with?

I hear the Japanese are planning to take the space race more seriously, you know sony toshiba, and panasonic can build the enterprise, or millennium falcon I'm hitching a ride.

another thought is we live on a planet that has 365 days a year, 24 hours a day, mars' days are like 25 hours long, but what if you were on a planet where the days (the time it's takes for that planet to make one full rotation) are 70 hours long, and the year (time it takes for that planet to make one trip around its sun) was 1000 days, would you be aware of the time difference, or would your internal biology adjust tho the gravitational field of that planet, and those 70 hours would seem like the 24 you are used too? would you age at the same rate basically 3 years in that planets one year? or would you age a year while on that planet? is this why they have stardates?

what about time travel, if you go in the opposite direction the earth is rotating, on a jet, and the flight takes 1 hour, you leave new york, to LA its now three hours earlier minus the hour you spent in flight so its 2 hours earlier, did you age or get younger? people experience something crudely called jet lag, but what if its really temporal stress from primitive time travel? that's why i call it temporal lag, or temporal stress