Part of the Sun Breaks Off and Forms a Vortex: What's Happening?

Footage of the tornado from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory - Photo: TWITTER

Scientists are saying they have never seen anything like it happen on Earth.Sun.

The Sun's mischief is not entirely surprising to scientists these days. Our Sun is becoming more active. It's buzzing with sunspot activity and flares.

In 2023, the Sun will continuously erupt with flares every day. In January 2023, the Sun had many flare eruptions of class X and class M. Class X was the largest flare eruption ever.

The sun is going through a new cycle of activity. It changes every 11 years. It goes from relatively quiet to completely noisy.

These cycles coincide with fluctuations in the Sun's magnetic field. When the magnetic field is at its weakest at the poles, the Sun's magnetic poles switch places and the polarity of the magnetic field reverses. This is when it is most active, known as solar maximum.

We are at solar maximum.

The Sun is mysterious and unpredictable, so we don’t know exactly when the reversal will happen. Scientists can usually only make an educated guess after the event has occurred. However, scientists’ current predictions put the Sun’s maximum solar eclipse in July 2025.

But the current cycle is also a bit strange. Not all solar cycles are built the same: Some are stronger, some are weaker.

Solar physicist Scott McIntosh of the US National Center for Atmospheric Research - who has been observing the Sun for decades and trying to understand its cycles - told Space.com that he has never seen a "vortex" like the one that just happened: A piece of the Sun broke off and was swept into the atmosphere.

We'll have to wait to learn more about this strange event.

Scientists are certainly now analysing the wealth of data they have from around-the-clock observatories, so hopefully the wait won’t be too long. Since the poles of the solar system are notoriously difficult to observe, the findings will be exciting.

According to Tuoi Tre