New ideas on the mechanism of solar CME's

[davenn]

hi guys

solar activity has been a love of mine since the early 1970's and am always looking out
for new research info

some recent studies and lots of computer animations have come up with new understandings
of the mechanisms that instigate CME's and other mass ejections from the sun

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddar...nism-to-describe-solar-eruptions-of-all-sizes

follow some of the other in text links for lots of related infoDave

 

[davenn]

WOW, I must be the only solar astronomer here ??

 

[Ken G]

Actually I find all this very interesting as well, but I must admit this latest press release strikes me as the usual incremental advance being touted as some fundamental breakthrough. The basic story of erupting filaments as CMEs has been around for 30 years at least, and the idea that big events might be the tip of the iceberg of many much smaller events has been one of the theories on the table for almost as long. So they have some new data that supports this longstanding hypothesis, which is very important and newsworthy and I'm glad you brought our attention to it. I just wish science writers could report this stuff without always painting it like a shocking new theory that just appeared yesterday. What happens over and over is, the reporter asks the new researcher to put their result in a context, so the researcher describes some decades-old theory that they set out to test in the first place, and the reporter writes it up like it is some kind of breakthrough in the thinking on the topic. Incremental results seem too boring, so instead they distort the actual process by which science gets done. I would find it pretty frustrating if I were one of the people who originally advanced the idea, but most of them are retired by now!

 

[davenn]

I just wish science writers could report this stuff without always painting it like a shocking new theory that just appeared yesterday.

yes agreed

Much of it is relatively old news to any of us into solar astronomy ... but at least it rehilites the info for newcomers to the subject
I have been into it for almost 50 years now. I was about 10 yrs old when I got my first decent telescope (8" Newtonian) that I was able to put a filter on and then spend many years drawing sunspots onto paper using the eyepiece projection method.
I really only stopped doing that in the early-mid 1990's when the internet started taking off and I found sources of solar images for downloading.
and have been doing that ever since from the SOHO and other new spacecraft data, eg SDO and ground based observatories

https://umbra.nascom.nasa.gov/newsite/images.htmlDave

 

[Ken G]

Yes those images are amazing, and I can drive to the August eclipse, so I'm looking forward to seeing it in real time.

 

[davenn]

Yes those images are amazing, and I can drive to the August eclipse, so I'm looking forward to seeing it in real time.

cool :) am envious
I was considering traveling to the US for the eclipse but the lack of funds and annual leave credits has killed that idea
will have to await another one closer to home

Dave

 

[MichaelMo]

Actually I find all this very interesting as well, but I must admit this latest press release strikes me as the usual incremental advance being touted as some fundamental breakthrough. The basic story of erupting filaments as CMEs has been around for 30 years at least, and the idea that big events might be the tip of the iceberg of many much smaller events has been one of the theories on the table for almost as long. So they have some new data that supports this longstanding hypothesis, which is very important and newsworthy and I'm glad you brought our attention to it. I just wish science writers could report this stuff without always painting it like a shocking new theory that just appeared yesterday. What happens over and over is, the reporter asks the new researcher to put their result in a context, so the researcher describes some decades-old theory that they set out to test in the first place, and the reporter writes it up like it is some kind of breakthrough in the thinking on the topic. Incremental results seem too boring, so instead they distort the actual process by which science gets done. I would find it pretty frustrating if I were one of the people who originally advanced the idea, but most of them are retired by now!

I tend to agree. I think it's useful however to look a the computer models as incremental improvements to work that has already been done in the past on the topic of solar atmospheric physics, in some cases more than a century ago:

 

[Blank_Stare]

Yes those images are amazing, and I can drive to the August eclipse, so I'm looking forward to seeing it in real time.

ME TOO!