<div style="margin: 12px 0px; font-family: arial; color: #333333; background: #ffffff; border: solid 4px #e5e5e5; width: 100%; clear: left;"><div class="CM_CTB_Content_Wrap" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;background-color: #ffffff;"><div style="border-bottom: solid 1px #dcdcdc; white-space: nowrap; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: #eeeeee ;background-image: url(http://clipmarks.com/images/source-bg.gif); background-repeat: repeat-x; height: 24px; line-height: 24px; vertical-align: middle; padding-bottom: 4px; color: #666666; font-size: 10px;" ><a href="http://clipmarks.com/clip-to-blog/" title="see clips that are hot right now"><img src="http://content.clipmarks.com/blog_embed/9b5f7b2e-0e04-41f0-8eae-d34c27f97d62/13329D3C-1E2D-46D3-BC1D-AAC6E0110E9D/" alt="" width="19" height="19" border="0" style="vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px 4px; display: inline; border: none; float:none;" /></a>clipped from <a title="http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/06/sunspot/" href="http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/06/sunspot/" style="font-size: 11px;">www.wired.com</a></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/06/sunspot/"><div align="center"><img src="http://content7.clipmarks.com/blog_cache/www.wired.com/img/4EF91F1B-871B-4C67-AE0B-D576D2C7BF1C" alt="c-transition1" /></div></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/06/sunspot/"><DIV id="page"> <DIV class="permalink" id="content"> <DIV> <A href="http://www.wired.com/wiredscience" id="blog_header"> <SPAN class="blogName">Wired Science</SPAN> <SPAN class="blogInfo">News for Your Neurons</SPAN> </A> </DIV> <DIV id="post-6368" class="post"> <H1>Psychedelic Sunspot Video Useful for Science, Too</H1> <DIV class="entryDescription"> <UL> <LI class="entryAuthor"> By Alexis Madrigal <A href="http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/06/sunspot/mailto:alexis.madrigal@gmail.com"> <IMG width="14" height="11" border="0" alt="Email Author" src="http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/wp-content/themes/wired/images/envelope.gif" /> </A> </LI> <LI class="entryDate"> June 18, 2009  |  </LI> <LI class="entryTime"> 2:00 pm  |  </LI> <LI class="entryCategories"> Categories: <A rel="category tag" title="View all posts in Space" href="http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/category/space/">Space</A>, <A rel="category tag" title="View all posts in Video Podcast" href="http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/category/podcast/">Video Podcast</A> </LI> </UL> </DIV> <DIV class="entry"> <P><A href="http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2009/06/c-transition1.jpg"><IMG width="670" height="670" alt="c-transition1" src="http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2009/06/c-transition1.jpg" title="c-transition1" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-6372" /></A></p> <P></P></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/06/sunspot/"><P>The beautiful virtual sunspot (see video below) was built using new observations about the structure of the sun. It represents an area 31,000 miles by 62,000 miles to a depth of 3,700 miles. Scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research used a wealth of equations that describe the interactions of particles in the environment to calculate the dynamics of the sunspot at 1.8 billion individual points.</P></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/06/sunspot/">Sunspots, which <A href="http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/05/solarcycle/">wax and wane in roughly 11-year cycles</A>, eject massive amounts of plasma into the solar system, sometimes causing disruptions of terrestrial communications and power grid infrastructure. We’ve been studying them for a 100 years</blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/06/sunspot/">The normal cycle appeared to have been disrupted, which would have required a major rethink of the sun’s internal dynamics.</blockquote></div><div style="margin: 0px 6px 6px 4px;"><table style="font-size: 11px;border-spacing: 0px;padding: 0px;" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tr><td style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;">&nbsp;</td><td align="right" style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;width:107px" width="107"><a href="http://clipmarks.com/share/13329D3C-1E2D-46D3-BC1D-AAC6E0110E9D/blog/" title="blog or email this clip"><img src="http://content8.clipmarks.com/images/c2b-foot.png" border="0" alt="blog it" width="107" height="17" style="border-width:0px;padding:0px;margin:0px;" /></a></td></tr></table></div></div>

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