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A coronal mass ejection is the result of a kind of tug of war on the sun, which starts when cooler clouds of solar material get trapped to the sun's surface by unstable forces, in this case taking on the whip-like appearance--or "solar filament"--that you see in the NASA video above. When the tension gets too great the whip "snaps" and hot plasma shoots spectacularly out into space. This particular plasma shot out at 900 miles per second. Travelling at that speed it would take you five minutes to go from Earth to the moon.
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A coronal mass ejection is the result of a kind of tug of war on the sun, which starts when cooler clouds of solar material get trapped to the sun's surface by unstable forces, in this case taking on the whip-like appearance--or "solar filament"--that you see in the NASA video above. When the tension gets too great the whip "snaps" and hot plasma shoots spectacularly out into space. This particular plasma shot out at 900 miles per second. Travelling at that speed it would take you five minutes to go from Earth to the moon.
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