from Hacker News

Something strange is happening on the sun, and we've never seen it before

by thrusong on 2/8/23, 11:57 AM with 114 comments

by singularity2001 on 2/9/23, 1:57 PM
Saving two clicks:
A polar vortex formed in the north. video:
https://twitter.com/TamithaSkov/status/1621276153075109888?s...
by pfdietz on 2/9/23, 1:38 PM
"The find is just the latest in a series of interesting space observations thanks to the capabilities of the James Webb Space Telescope."
How has this anything to do with the JWST? That telescope would be ruined instantly if it were pointed at the Sun.
by ohadron on 2/9/23, 1:02 PM
I've just started reading Project Hail Mary, and this is more or less how it starts.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54493401-project-hail-ma...
by onion2k on 2/9/23, 2:03 PM
Solar cycles are periodic 11-year changes in the Sun’s activity.
Presumably we've only been observing the sun for a few hundred years at most, and maybe less than a hundred and fifty with any level of precise accuracy and scientific rigour. That's maybe 30 cycles in total, and 12 or 13 where we'd really be able to tell what's happening. If you bring probes or telescopes that can look at the sun into the mix we've observed maybe 4 or 5 cycles.
The notion that something is extraordinary because we haven't seen it before is ridiculous. The sun probably does thousands of things we haven't observed yet. That doesn't make it weird or strange. That just means we've only been a scientifically literate species for an incredibly short time.
by drmpeg on 2/9/23, 1:31 PM
Near real-time solar images and video can be found here.
https://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/
by mbfg on 2/9/23, 2:12 PM
The saddest part is reading the twitter comments on the scientist's post.
by gwill on 2/9/23, 1:22 PM
the article mentions the 11-year solar cycle and how strange things happen above 55 degrees around the end of those cycles, but is the sun currently at the stage that we'd expect to see strange occurrences?
by somat on 2/9/23, 7:46 PM
I went down a fun rabbit hole recently. It started with the innocent question "How much iron is in the sun?" fun because the answer ranges from fractional percentages to the sun is a stellar remnant and most of it is iron.
Here is one of the more out there theories I found.
https://arxiv.org/ftp/astro-ph/papers/0410/0410569.pdf
The fractional percent crowd bases their theory on the observed spectrum of the sun. the large iron core side bases their theory on the observed distribution of iron in the inner solar system.
It is interesting because too much iron and there would be no fusion, but think of the iron cores in the planets, the sun coalesced from the same dust, there has to be a large amount in there.
by bicijay on 2/9/23, 1:18 PM
What a good title.
by boringg on 2/9/23, 2:13 PM
Isn't vice trying to sell their publication ... so they are trying to boost engagement with clickbait ?
by 1attice on 2/9/23, 8:12 PM
Reminds me of my fave new microgenre: foreign films about something going wrong with the sun that causes it to scour the earth with gamma radiation, eg. _Into the Night_.
It may be time to begin flying west
by youssefabdelm on 2/9/23, 4:43 PM
Can someone who knows something about the sun tell us... if this is cause for concern? (Not that we can really do anything about it lol)
by HelloMcFly on 2/9/23, 3:08 PM
As far as titles go, this is far from the worst. I feel title irritation has definitely increased around here.
by webdoodle on 2/9/23, 4:32 PM
The solar polar vortex isn't something new. It does it every 11 years, near the solar maximum.
by azubinski on 2/9/23, 1:23 PM
Finally the end of the world! I'm already tired of waiting for this to happen.
by wonderwonder on 2/9/23, 2:54 PM
Is that a real unedited video of the sun? If so that's pretty incredible
by jcgoette on 2/9/23, 7:20 PM
Making sure this isn't a photo of chorizo again...
by saifali1122 on 2/9/23, 2:01 PM
Enter "download" rm -rf
by 6_6_6 on 2/9/23, 3:40 PM
vice's motherboard seems desparate at rendering content. needs more cpu and ram.