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 20 August 2008 20:56 BST

Powerful sunquakes spotted in space

Monday, 21 Apr 2008 14:19
The Soho spacecraft spotted the sunquakes

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Powerful quakes around the sun have been spotted in space by Soho, a spacecraft run by Nasa and the European Space Agency (Esa).

The 'sunquakes' ripple around our nearest star as a result of solar flares exploding above its surface.

When the number of solar flares increases, so to does the strength of five-minute oscillations around the sun.

Christoffer Karoff from the University of Aarhus said the "strength of the correlation was so strong that there can be no doubt about it".

Scientists behind the discovery say it provides valuable information about the sun's interior conditions.

The sunquakes are similar to the affect on Earth in the aftermath of large earthquakes.

For example after the 2004 Sumatra-Andaman earthquake the Earth was affected by seismic waves for several weeks.

The scientists will now work to understand how the solar flares excite the global oscullations.

They argue that by looking for similar oscillations on other stars astronomers may be able to monitor them for flares.
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