Hey, knock that off!

Gaseous

You know those thermal camera videos of people farting that show the gas coming out of their derrieres? Imagine that, but with the Sun — which is pretty much what we got in an amazing new video of our star, well, ejecting a huge load of plasma.

Posted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the video depicts a coronal mass ejection, which is a solar storm that spews out plasma and magnetic energy from the Sun's atmosphere. Which is pretty much a fart, right?

We're not the only ones who think so, either — at least one Twitter user pointed out that the Sun appears to have "pooted a lil" in this incredible video of our life-giving star.

Boldly Go

The NOAA's latest satellite, the GOES-18, was launched in early March and became fully operational in late June, but you wouldn't be blamed for missing it after the much-anticipated rollout of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. This epic fart video was taken on July 10 by the Solar Ultraviolet Imager, GOES-18's imaging device.

It may not be as sexy as the Webb, but GOES-18's expected lifespan is 15 years — a good five years longer than the JWST's five-to-ten-year lifetime, but who's counting?

Tooted and Booted

This isn't the first CME the sun has tooted out — one "canyon of fire" solar storm earlier in 2022 led to incredible Aurora Borealis sightings.

While you may see some pundits claiming that a Sun fart like this will lead to power grid outages here on our pale blue dot, these sorts of flares — and others much larger — happen regularly and usually don't end up affecting electronics on Earth beyond short-wave radio here and there.

In short, we can all enjoy a little potty humor without adding yet another thing out of our control to worry about.

More on CMEs: Here's What Happens When a Solar Storm Slams Into Earth


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