Spotted: Huge 'black holes' on Sun's surface, are we in trouble?

Photo Credits: NASA via Getty Images

Washington: The US space agency NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) have spotted two huge 'black holes' on the surface of the Sun.

The 'black holes' are called 'coronal holes' and the source of a high-speed wind of solar particles that streams off the Sun some three times faster than the slower wind elsewhere.

They are less dense and have lower temperature than the rest of the Sun's surface.

The solar winds produced from these holes can not only create geomagnetic storms on the Earth which can disturb communications in all forms but also affect astronauts' on deeper space mission like Mars in the near future.

One of the hole is the biggest seen in decades which is about "six-eight percent of the total solar surface".

Karen C Fox and Steele Hill of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center says,'While it is unclear what causes coronal holes, they correlate to areas on the Sun where magnetic fields soar up and away, without looping back down to the surface, as they do elsewhere'.

Coronal holes are low-density regions of the sun's atmosphere, known as the corona.

Because they contain little solar material, they have lower temperatures and thus appear much darker than their surroundings.

Coronal holes are visible in certain types of extreme ultraviolet light, which is typically invisible to our eyes.

"These 'coronal holes' are important to understanding the space environment around the Earth through which our technology and astronauts travel," NASA said in a statement.

(With IANS inputs)