Word: solarized
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...think hurricanes and tornadoes are powerful, take a look at the sun's periodic storms. Kicking up twisting arcs of fiery gases, solar eruptions from that great thermonuclear reactor in the sky can stretch as far as the distance from Earth to the moon. The most intense outbursts explode a billion tons of material off the sun's searing (11,000[degrees]F) surface at speeds of millions of miles an hour. If these electrically charged particles happen to slam against Earth's atmosphere, they can imperil astronauts, push satellites out of orbit or fry their circuitry. If they...
Last week they seemed a little closer to getting their wish. At a meeting of the International Astronomical Union in Kyoto, Japan, and at a special NASA briefing in Washington, solar physicists ecstatically reported results from a new generation of solar observatories--a NASA-European Space Agency satellite known as soho (for Solar and Heliospheric Observatory), which has been circling the sun since December 1995, and the National Science Foundation's global network of ground-based solar stations. By keeping a day-to-day eye on solar weather features such as the sun's "trade winds" and "jet streams," these...
...data several times. The scientists also got a close-up look at the sun's lower-latitude trade winds, whose existence they had hitherto only suspected. The new probes not only confirmed these suspicions but also showed that the winds--actually, great bands of plasma slightly warmer than neighboring solar gases--dive deep into the solar interior, itself a mass of gases, then flow back toward the equator, creating a circular gyre reminiscent of Earth's great ocean currents, such as those that sweep the Atlantic and Pacific. "We used to think the inside of the sun was fairly simple...
...least it wasn't for nothing: before closing the hatch again at 3 a.m. EDT, the pair manually realigned two solar panels on the Spektr module, which should boost their power supply to about 90 percent. Another spacewalk is tentatively planned for next month. TIME Daliy's Mir coverage
With or without power, however, Mir remains a troubled ship. Earlier in the week, Solovyev was guiding an unmanned cargo craft in for a remote-control docking when the station's computer suddenly quit, sending the entire hydra-headed Mir into a slow roll. This swung its solar panels out of alignment with the sun, causing power to flicker and fade, and with it the TV monitor Solovyev was using to steer the cargo ship. But the veteran cosmonaut stayed cool, flying the craft blind until it was safely docked. That, said James van Laak, one of NASA...