This image, provided by the European Space Agency (ESA) on Thursday, July 16, 2020, shows the Sun. The Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) on ESA's Solar Orbiter spacecraft took this image on 30 May 2020. It shows the Sun's appearance at a wavelength of 17 nanometers, which is in the extreme ultraviolet region of the electromagnetic spectrum. During an online press briefing with Solar Orbiter mission experts, the first images from ESA's new Sun-observing spacecraft were released on Thursday. (Solar Orbiter/EUI Team (ESA & NASA); CSL, IAS, MPS, PMOD/WRC, ROB, UCL/MSSL/ via AP)
By Marcia Dunn
A European and NASA spacecraft has snapped the closest pictures ever taken of the sun, revealing countless little "campfires" flaring everywhere.
Scientists on Thursday released the first images taken by Solar Orbiter, launched from Cape Canaveral in February.
The orbiter was about 48 million miles (77 million kilometers) from the sun — about halfway between Earth and the sun — when it took the stunning high-resolution pictures last month.
NASA's Parker Solar Probe is flying much closer to the sun than Solar Orbiter — too close for cameras to safely photograph the sun. Its lone camera faces away from the sun to observe the solar wind.
That's why Solar Orbiter's new pictures showing vibrant swirls of yellow and dark smoky gray — the first images from so close and at such small scale — are so precious. The team had to create a new vocabulary to name these tiny flare-ups, said European Space Agency project scientist Daniel Muller.
Muller described the observed multitude of "campfires" shooting into the corona, or sun's crown-like outer atmosphere, as quite possibly "the tiny cousins of the solar flares that we already know." Millions if not billions of times smaller, these tiny flares may be heating the corona, he said, long known to be hundreds of times hotter than the actual solar surface for unknown reasons.
The Royal Observatory of Belgium's David Berghmans, principal scientist of the instrument that captured the images, said he was blown away. He said his first response was: "This is not possible. It cannot be that good."
"It was really much better than we expected, but what we dared to hope for," Berghmans said.
These so-called campfires, Berghmans noted, are "literally everywhere we look." Not yet well understood, they could be mini explosions, or nanoflares. More measurements are planned.
The $1.5 billion spacecraft will tilt its orbit as the mission goes on, providing unprecedented views of the sun's poles. This vantage point will allow it to capture the first pictures of the solar poles.
Solar Orbiter will get even closer to the sun in two years.
"This is just the beginning of the long epic journey of Solar Orbiter," Muller said.
The pandemic has forced Solar Orbiter's scientists to work from home for months. Only a few engineers are allowed at any one time inside the control center in Darmstadt, Germany.
___
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Amazon is betting that ammonia could be the fuel of the future, participating in a Series A round for the Brooklyn-based company Amogy in December. Amogy aims to de-carbonize transportation with a clean energy system that uses ammonia as a renewable fuel. Amogy is partnering with Amazon on its first commercial product - an ammonia-powered cargo-shipping vessel. Amogy CEO Seonghoon Woo joins Cheddar Climate to discuss.
Cryptocurrency is expected to become a part of our daily lives — but what sort of environmental impact does it have? As the U.S. becomes the crypto mining capital of the world, climate advocates are worried about mining companies reopening old coal plants, using massive amounts of energy, wasteful hardware, and more. Congressional Democrats led by Senator Elizabeth Warren are demanding answers from mining firms about their electricity use and waste levels. John Belizaire, CEO of Soluna Computing, joins Cheddar Climate to discuss the congressional letters, how crypto mining can become a green industry, and more.
Driver assistance monitoring systems are meant to keep the driver's eyes on the road, but according to a report from AAA, different ways of monitoring provide significantly different results. The study found that direct camera-based systems that scanned the driver's eye movements were faster and more reliable than those indirect systems that looked at steering-wheel input. Megan McKernan, the manager of automotive services for the Automobile Club of Southern California, joined Cheddar to discuss the findings. "Triple-A is recommending that automakers include both direct and indirect systems just to really prevent consumers from trying to misuse these systems," she said, noting that neither system on its own is not foolproof.
Wave Neuroscience is a neurological health tech company that specializes in clinical and at-home personalized brain stimulation technology. Erik Won, president and chief medical officer and Fred Walke, CEO, joined Cheddar's Opening Bell to discuss their company's hopes for allowing patients to identify and treat unique brain disorders while empowering them to understand their unique neurological makeups — including for the high-stress positions of professional athletes. "We have a mobile device that provides a very light stimulation that gives them a therapy that gives them confidence so there's a just knowing that they're doing something for it," said Walke. "But it also helps them get back into a rhythm. It helps their brain synchronize around certain frequencies that that we target, and it helps them really understand that they've done everything they can to get to their highest level of success."
Democratic lawmakers are now calling on Bitcoin mining companies in the U.S. to assess how much electricity they use and how it could all potentially impact residents and the environment in the near future. Since its conception, crypto mining has been at the center of a debate. The question is: Is crypto mining playing a key role in renewable energy or could it totally derail U.S. climate goals? Host of The Wendy O show Wendy O, joined Cheddar to discuss more.
Nutritional supplement beverage company Athletic Greens has achieved unicorn status. The company announced a new $115 million funding round, bringing its valuation to $1.2 billion. The company's flagship product AG1 combines 75 different vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients into one daily serving. Athletic Greens says it is poised to reach the millions of consumers who are currently driving the health and wellness market's exponential growth. Athletic Greens founder and CEO Chris Ashenden joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.
A powerful winter storm hit the Northeast over the weekend leaving 100,000 New Yorkers in the dark as well as snowfall up to 30.9 inches in parts of Massachusetts. The nor'easter hit with blizzard conditions of wind speed and poor visibility.
