A massive eruption on the surface of the sun this week blasted out a wave of super-hot plasma so high that it could tower over 20 Earths, NASA officials say. Despite its size, the solar eruption was not the most powerful example of the sun's stormy wrath, they added. They also wrote that "Magnetic forces drove the flow of plasma, but without sufficient force to overcome the sun's gravity much of the plasma fell back into the sun. The length of the eruption extends about 160,000 miles [257,495 kilometers] out from the sun. With Earth about 7,900 miles [12,714 km] in diameter, this relatively minor eruption is about 20 times the diameter of our planet."
This solar eruption happened on Monday Dec. 31 and was recorded on camera by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, a spacecraft that captures high-definition video of the sun.
SOURCE: Yahoo! News
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