An enormous “solar tornado” the size of 14 Earths stacked on top of each other recently raged on the sun’s surface for three whole days. The enormous plasma twister may be one of the largest ever recorded.
The solar tornado emerged near the sun’s north pole on March 15 and continued to grow and shape-shift until it finally dissipated on March 18, when the fiery twister “overtorqued itself” and spit out a plume of plasma, or ionized gas, into space, Spaceweather.com reported. The ejected plasma will not hit Earth.
Astrophotographer and Arizona resident Andrew McCarthy tweeted that the solar tornado was “14 Earths tall,” which is around 111,000 miles (178,000 kilometers) tall. The twister also rained “moon-sized” globs of plasma on the solar surface, he added.
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