Giant Solar Tsunami Viewed from NASA's STEREO Spacecraft

clipped from www.dailygalaxy.com Just as earthquakes can set off huge tsunami waves on the surface of our oceans, a coronal mass ejection or flare can cause a tsunami on the Sun's surface—and it did on May 19, 2007. The waves generated by the explosions can travel at over a million kilometers per hour.  The event was captured by NASA's twin Stereo spacecraft and was observed by a team at Trinity College, Dublin. The event lasted for about 35 minutes and ultimately covered almost the full disk of the Sun.  “The energy released in these explosions is phenomenal, about two billion times the annual world energy consumption in just a fraction of a second,” stated Long. “We were able to show for the first time that this wave actually propagates almost all the way from the surface of the Sun to high up in the Sun's atmosphere,” said Dr. Gallagher, a colleague of Long.