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Solar 'Tadpoles' Finally Explained By By Bill Christensen

posted: 04 March 2005 04:37 am ET
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Solar "tadpoles" - dark shadows
that seem to wiggle down toward the surface of the sun during flares - may have
been explained by University of Warwick astrophysicists.

(From Solar
Tadpoles)
For several years, scientists
who study the sun have been intrigued by this mysterious phenomenon. Dr Valery
Nakariakov and Dr Erwin Verwichte analysed observations obtained with NASA's
"Transition Region And Coronal Explorer" (TRACE) space mission. They theorize
that the wiggles of the tadpoles' tails are earth-sized waves similar to the
waves in a flag blown by the wind. They think that the waves are produced by
a phenomenon known as "negative energy waves"; waves pull energy from the medium
they propagate through. The "tadpoles" are optical illusions, rather than real
physical structures; the apparently descending tadpole head marks the falling
start point of the matter's upward acceleration.

(From Solar
Tadpoles)
Science fiction writers
have long had fun with the idea that living creatures could exist in the intense
heat of a star like our sun. Arthur
C. Clarke wrote a wonderful story about a solar observatory on the planet
Mercury that made an incredible, unexpected observation during a massive flare:
We were looking
at what seemed to be a translucent oval, its interior laced with a network of
almost invisible lines. Where the lines crossed there appeared to be tiny, pulsing
nodes of light...
What we were seeing was
impossible, yet the evidence was there before our eyes. We were looking at
life, where no life could exist.
The eruption had hurled
the thing out of its normal environment, deep down in the flaming atmosphere
of the sun...
(From Out of the Sun ~1959)
More recently, Stephen
Baxter wrote in his 1994 novel Ring
about photino birds, creatures that lived within suns, and could even
fly between them:
She descended
into the Sun, through the ... flock of photino birds. The birds soared past
and around her, tiny planets of dark matter racing through their tight solar
orbits.
The birds continually
nudged toward or away from each other, like a horde of satellites maneuvering
for docking. Many of the transient clusters they formed ... seemed immensely
complex. There had to be a reason for all this activity...
(From Ring, published 1994)
It turns out that there
was a reason - but you'll have to read the book to find out! Other works in
the "creatures on the sun" genre include Proof by Hal Clement and Sundiver
by David Brin.
Read the original article
at Solar
Tadpoles Wave At Astrophysicists; they also have a very cool solar tadpole
animation that demonstrates the uncanny movement that gave birth to the name
"tadpoles." Thanks to Fred Kiesche at the
eternal golden braid for the tip and some sf background on this story.
(This Science Fiction
in the News story used with permission from Technovelgy.com
- where science meets fiction.)
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