Anomalism
Diamond Member
- Dec 1, 2020
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Some solar tornados on the Sun reach around 100,000 km across. Earth’s diameter is about 12,700 km, so they can be multiple times the size of our entire planet. A swirling tornado of plasma, multiple times the size of Earth.
The biggest solar tornados are roughly 5-7% of the Sun’s width. Now scale that up.
Take a red supergiant like UY Scuti, which has an estimated diameter of about 2.4 billion km. If you replaced the Sun with this star, its surface would extend beyond the orbit of Jupiter. It would swallow the entire inner solar system.
If similar plasma structures formed at around 5% of that star’s diameter: 0.05 × 2,400,000,000 km = 120,000,000 km. The average distance from Earth to the Sun is about 150,000,000 km. So proportionally scaled solar tornados on the largest known stars could potentially reach sizes approaching the distance from the Sun to Earth. In absolute size, they could be larger than dozens of Suns placed side by side.
On the Sun, a solar storm can hurl billions of tons of plasma at millions of km/h. Scale that up to a red supergiant with a plasma vortex 120 million km across. The energy involved is absurd.
It could launch material across an entire planetary system in one spin. Planets wouldn’t just be scorched. They’d be swept along like leaves in a cosmic hurricane. Pure, untethered plasma fury on a scale our brains can barely grasp.
Anyway...
This is the kind of stuff I think about on Friday night. Lol I hope you enjoyed it.
The biggest solar tornados are roughly 5-7% of the Sun’s width. Now scale that up.
Take a red supergiant like UY Scuti, which has an estimated diameter of about 2.4 billion km. If you replaced the Sun with this star, its surface would extend beyond the orbit of Jupiter. It would swallow the entire inner solar system.
If similar plasma structures formed at around 5% of that star’s diameter: 0.05 × 2,400,000,000 km = 120,000,000 km. The average distance from Earth to the Sun is about 150,000,000 km. So proportionally scaled solar tornados on the largest known stars could potentially reach sizes approaching the distance from the Sun to Earth. In absolute size, they could be larger than dozens of Suns placed side by side.
On the Sun, a solar storm can hurl billions of tons of plasma at millions of km/h. Scale that up to a red supergiant with a plasma vortex 120 million km across. The energy involved is absurd.
It could launch material across an entire planetary system in one spin. Planets wouldn’t just be scorched. They’d be swept along like leaves in a cosmic hurricane. Pure, untethered plasma fury on a scale our brains can barely grasp.
Anyway...
This is the kind of stuff I think about on Friday night. Lol I hope you enjoyed it.
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