Watch: Piece of sun breaks off; leaves scientists baffled

Whenever anyone talks about space, the sun arouses the majority of curiosity. Scientists have been researching for years seeking the secrets hidden inside the blazing star. Recently, one event left the experts scratching their heads. In a never-seen-before incident, a portion of the sun’s surface broke off, resulting in a tornado-like swirl around the body’s northern pole. NASA managed to capture the astonishing phenomenon on the James Webb Space Telescope. The video, dropped on Twitter by space weather forecaster Dr Tamitha Skov, depicts a sizable plasma filament erupting from the sun and circling in a large polar vortex. However, scientists believe the once-per-solar-cycle reversal of the sun’s magnetic field to be the reason, they are unsure and cannot determine with certainty what triggered the event or its potential consequences.

Talk about Polar Vortex! Material from a northern prominence just broke away from the main filament & is now circulating in a massive polar vortex around the north pole of our Star. Implications for understanding the Sun's atmospheric dynamics above 55° here cannot be overstated! pic.twitter.com/1SKhunaXvP

— Dr. Tamitha Skov (@TamithaSkov) February 2, 2023

Skov explained in the caption of her post, “Talk about the Polar Vortex! Material from a northern prominence just broke away from the main filament & is now circulating in a massive polar vortex around the north pole of our Star. Implications for understanding the Sun’s atmospheric dynamics above 55° here cannot be overstated.” In another tweet, Skob revealed that the material circumnavigated the pole at a latitude of about 60° in about 8 hours. This indicates that 96 kilometres per second, or 60 miles per second, is the upper bound for the calculation of the horizontal wind speed in this occurrence.

More observations of the #SolarPolarVortex reveal it took roughly 8 hours for material to circumnavigate the pole at approximately 60° latitude. This means an upper bound in the estimation of horizontal wind speed in this event is 96 kilometers per second or 60 miles a second! pic.twitter.com/EpHhwdLeDs

— Dr. Tamitha Skov (@TamithaSkov) February 4, 2023

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According to another theory, the sun’s core accounts for about 90 percent of the sun and is 15 million degrees Celsius of plasma. To explain it another way, plasma is a state of matter that resembles gas but has a majority of ionised particles. Additionally, in the sun’s core, hundreds of protons clash with one another every second to create helium nuclei, leading to a nuclear fusion reaction that releases energy. Due to humanity’s limited understanding of the sun, specialists acknowledge that it likely has something to do with the magnetic field of the sun, but the rest is still unknown. The ecliptic plane, or the geometric plane containing Earth’s orbit, is the sole place from which scientists can observe the sun. Scientists may have to remain in confusion until the European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter project, which is capturing pictures of the sun while extending its orbit beyond the ecliptic plane, gives an explanation. Read all the Latest News , Trending News , Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.