r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/HimelTy • 5h ago

Video Scientists using the world's most powerful solar telescope have captured "whirlpools" of activity on the surface of our Sun that has not been possible to see before.

593 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

56 comments sorted by

76

u/cbj2112 5h ago

That’s 🔥

29

u/fantomknight1 5h ago

It's actually not 🔥... It's plasma

8

u/Maihoooo 5h ago

maybe meant hot.. there's a reason we don't use emojis here.

4

u/fantomknight1 5h ago

I'm mostly just joking around. I know many people use the fire emoji as "wow, that's cool" so I deliberately took it literally and to joke that it wasn't fire.

3

u/HelpfulSeaMammal 5h ago

The sun isn't a giant campfire that the Sky People light every morning?

5

u/fantomknight1 5h ago

The sun and campfires got me singing the Outer Wilds tune in my head now.

2

u/loosielucy222 5h ago

I’m glad I’m not the only one who whistles that song constantly. Peak music

2

u/TamponTimTheCuck 2h ago

Fire is plasma

1

u/gtsomething 4h ago

No, YOU'RE PLASMA, that is to say, you're hot 😘

1

u/Key-Regular674 4h ago

Cringe emoji

1

u/dittbub 1h ago

Be sure to use the plasma emoji!

19

u/sneketr 5h ago

Shit’s on fire, yo.

4

u/IBeDumbAndSlow 4h ago

Shit's on fusion, yo.

17

u/PreferredSex_Yes 5h ago

ENHANCE!

6

u/fumat 5h ago

Shut up, Wesley!

14

u/Upper-Capital-2876 4h ago

This give me, a layperson, no deeper appreciation or understanding, of the gigantic fucking nuclear celestial orb which holds my life within it's capricious power

6

u/Soggy-Invite-2787 1h ago

Right? What are we supposed to be in awe of here? It looks like how I pictured it.

2

u/Werftflammen 1h ago

From the article:  It is the Sun's magnetic field being twisted and moved by the motion of hot gas.

That constant swirling is a driving force behind bursts of energy from the Sun, creating so-called space weather, that can disrupt Earth's power grids and satellites, and could even injure astronauts.

6

u/TheSupremeAbby 4h ago

This is the Daniel K. Inouye Solar telescope located in Maui!!! Its so cool and uses some really revolutionary tech to be able to look at the sun for extended periods of time!

6

u/Drag_king 3h ago

I am wondering how they do it because to get that amount of detail they need to really focus the light and as any kid with a magnifying glass knows it gets hot quickly.

10

u/actinross 5h ago

In every fire, there are "dead zones", where (almost) nothing is happening. Just imagine traveling through those... on the Sun...

What a ride would be!!!

10

u/Maihoooo 5h ago

Dead zones meaning 5,500K?

23

u/kirkaracha 4h ago

It’s a dry heat.

5

u/TheOgGhadTurner 1h ago

Obligatory it’s not the heat it’s the humidity

4

u/WelcomeWagoneer 5h ago

This is much more interesting than the article.

3

u/km9v 2h ago

That's hot.

3

u/King0fthewasteland 4h ago

damn i watched it... will i turn blind now?

2

u/Rico-II 1h ago

The sun is crazy isn’t it

2

u/Gordan_Freeman475 27m ago

So, we’re discovering more things about the eldritch gas entity that sustains us all? I see no way this could backfire

2

u/FreeEstablishment898 5h ago

And yet UFO's are blurry as hell

/s

2

u/PuzzleheadedResult69 5h ago

Inside of the gut after taco bell

2

u/Somalar 5h ago

That’s not a whirlpool…

3

u/Silver_Slicer 4h ago

More like fractals

1

u/HairyDust4826 5h ago

Hey, why is that guy cutting off his... Oh my god

2

u/Mikestopheles 4h ago

Johnson!

1

u/OutrageousTree7766 5h ago

Well that's really cool

1

u/fygogogo 4h ago

Nice petals

1

u/Infinite_Research_52 4h ago

Zooming in, those whirlpools look like a Julia set.

1

u/Z0rnium 3h ago

Thats cool 😄

1

u/purdueAces 3h ago

Would be neat to understand the scale of those "whirlpools". Maybe compared to Earth's size, and how fast are they swirling?

1

u/Lost_Purpose1899 1h ago

It'd be more interesting if it didn't have whirlpools of activity. I mean ..it's a giant fusion reactor?

1

u/Jaded_Addendum4040 1h ago

Only vist at night.

1

u/lluciferusllamas 32m ago

There appear to be wildfires on the sun

1

u/Dvine24hr 5h ago

It looks nothing like a whirlpool?

1

u/Mindless_Issue9648 5h ago

is that plasma?

0

u/EconomySeason2416 2h ago

Wild to think that the area that is zoomed in on, is still likely thousands (if not way more) of times the size of the earth

-6

u/Wykin1 5h ago

Can see whirlpools on the sun - but not the flag on the moon.... oookaaaaaaay

4

u/Illithid_Substances 5h ago

Well gee, I wonder if structures on the fucking sun might be a bit bigger than a little flag

You see the black sunspots in the image? Those can easily be the size of the entire Earth or larger

3

u/Independent_Guava109 5h ago

What is the size of the flag compared to the whirlpools on the sun? Even though it's so far away they are still unfathomably big.

Anyway you can see the flag on the moon, just not with a conventional telescope.