Quake (natural Phenomenon) - Sunquake

A sunquake is a quake that occurs on the Sun.

Seismic waves produced by sunquakes can shake the Sun to its very center, just as earthquakes can cause the entire Earth to shake. However, detectable sunquakes usually involve much more energy than their terrestrial counterparts.

On July 9, 1996 a sunquake was produced by an X2.6 class solar flare and its corresponding coronal mass ejection. According to researchers who reported the event in Nature, this sunquake was comparable to an earthquake of a magnitude 11.3 on the Richter scale. That represents a release of energy approximately 40,000 times greater than the devastating 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and far greater than any earthquake ever recorded. It is unclear how such a relatively modest flare could have liberated sufficient energy to generate such powerful seismic waves.

The ESA and NASA spacecraft SOHO records sunquakes as part of its mission to study the sun.

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