NASA has identified a massive patch of darkness snaking across the surface of the Sun. But don't worry, a giant space-snake has not made its new home so close to Earth. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) has identified it as an unusually massive and long filament of solar material that is some one million miles across, from end to end.
According to the space agency, these filaments are clouds of dense solar material that are suspended on top of the Sun's surface by the workings of powerful and still very mysterious magnetic forces.
The filament in question has been called "gigantic" by the SDO team, and if it were straightened, it would almost be able to wrap around the Sun's widest point of girth.
"SDO captured images of the filament in numerous wavelengths, each of which helps highlight material of different temperatures on the sun," NASA reported. "By looking at any solar feature in different wavelengths and temperatures, scientists can learn more about what causes such structures, as well as what catalyzes their occasional giant eruptions out into space."
These 'eruptions' the agency mentions are coronial mass ejections, or CMEs, that blast a great deal of solar material into space, flying at inconceivable speeds for thousands of miles.
Nature World News previously reported how one theory holds that a particularly strong series of CMEs utterly wiped out the weakening atmosphere of a young Mars, reducing the Red Planet to the desolate and icy landscape we see today.
And the roiling and unstable magnetic forces behind this new massive dark filament are the same that experts suspect spark CMEs. In fact, a particularly unusual CME was found to have ejected a stunning amount of solar filament material - resulting in the largest outpouring of solar photons ever monitored.
However, while these filaments, are exceptionally unstable, they have been known to last for days or even weeks - mysterious dark shapes snaking across the otherwise brilliant Sun.