WASHINGTON: A massive coronal hole as opened up on the surface of the sun, blasting solar winds toward Earth.
An epically huge hole has just opened up on the topmost layer of the sun, and it is so big that 50 Earths could fit in it at once.
The hole has opened up in the magnetic field that surrounds the sun, allowing for the ejection of a huge amount of particles, sending many toward Earth and triggering geomagnetic storms that could knock out satellites and disrupt radios — as well as create spectacular aurora borealis — aka Northern Ligths — light shows at the poles and beyond, according to a Space.
Amazing images were captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, which orbits the Earth. It used special instrumentation to capture the sun at an ultraviolet wavelength, since humans can’t see this hole, even if we could stare at the sun through a telescope.
This giant gap in the sun’s magnetic field has opened up a channel through which charged particles can escape the sun, speeding out from our closest star at 500 miles per second in all directions.
It’s nothing to worry about — coronal holes like this are actually fairly common, and happen most often in the less active part of the 11-year cycle the sun goes through. They happen in the sun’s outermost layer, called the corona, and typically near the sun’s poles or at lower latitudes.
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