Astronomers Look to Coronal Cavities to Predict Huge Solar Blasts

Astronomers Look to Coronal Cavities to Predict Huge Solar Blasts

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

From time to time, the sun projects billion-ton clouds of charged particles from its scorching surface, surrounded by a solar atmosphere scientists dub corona, into space. Sometimes, these blasts hit the Earth’s magnetic field with a high potential for wrecking havoc to satellites and communications, and in extreme cases massive electrical power surges. It’s become a sort of priority, thus, for astronomers and other scientists from around the world to study and understand how these blasts form, in order to predict and minimize the damage they might cause.

So far, NASA scientists’ best bet lies on the mysterious cavities in the sun’s outer atmosphere, or corona. It’s believed these cavities serve as solar launch pads for the huge clouds of hurled plasma known as coronal mass ejections or CMEs.