plasma
Why Do Red Dwarfs Live So Long?
While our Sun will only survive for about 5 billion more years, smaller, cooler red dwarfs can last for trillions…
Can You Kill a Star With Iron?
Since the energy required to fuse iron is more than the energy that you get from doing it, could you…
Watch an Enormous “Plasma Snake” Erupt from the Sun
Over the course of April 28–29 a gigantic filament, briefly suspended above the surface* of the Sun, broke off and…
Better than Bieber, Rosetta’s Comet Sings Strange, Seductive Song
Tune in to the song of Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko Scientists can't figure exactly why yet, but Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko has been singing since…
Voyager 1 Hears Sun Echoes Far Away, In Interstellar Space
Wow! Even from interstellar space, the plucky Voyager 1 can still listen in to activities from our Sun. Whenever the…
How Many Ways Can the Sun Kill You?
The Sun has a Swiss army knife of ways it can do you in, from radiation to solar flares. And…
Watch the Rise and Fall of a Towering Inferno on the Sun
Caught on camera by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, a prominence blazes hundreds of thousands of miles out from the Sun's surface (i.e.,…
Ain’t Misbehavin’ – Turbulence, Solar Flares and Magnetism
What's more fun than something that misbehaves? When it comes to solar dynamics, we know a lot, but there are…
Bright Jets Blast Out from a Newborn Star
Like very young humans, very young stars also tend to make a big mess out of the stuff around them…
Black Hole Jets Might Be Molded by Magnetism
Visible-light Hubble image of the jet emitted by the 3-billion-solar-mass black hole at the heart of galaxy M87 (Feb. 1998)…