Blue whales can eat half a million calories in a single mouthful

The blue whale is the largest animal that has ever lived. Ironically, it sustains its massive bulk by eating some of the smallest creatures in the ocean – krill. A foraging whale lunges into a swarm of these shrimp-like animals, accelerating to high speed with its mouth open at a right angle. Pushed back by the rush of water, its mouth expands and its tongue (itself the size of an elephant) inverts to create more room.

The whale engulfs up to 110 tonnes of water and any krill within is filtered out and swallowed.

There’s every reason to think that filtering out small prey is an incredibly efficient way of feeding. The largest fish, both living (the whale shark and basking shark) and extinct (Leedsichthys), are all filter-feeders.

 And the biggest of the whales – the blue and fin – both use this technique. But no one has ever put the reputed efficiency of filter-feeding to the test, by calculating how much energy a blue whale spends on its lunges and how much it gets in return. Jeremy Goldbogen at the University of British Columbia is the first.

Goldbogen tagged 265 blue whales off the coast of California and Mexico, attaching recording devices to their backs when they surface. The data-loggers recorded the whales’ position, their acceleration, and the noise and pressure of the surrounding water. The noise was important – by measuring the sound of water rushing past the animal, Goldbergen could work out how fast it was travelling.

In total, he managed to record over 650 feeding lunges. On each one, the whale accelerates to a top speed of 8 miles per hour in less than a minute. If that seems low, bear in mind that this is an animal that weighs 180 tonnes; for comparison, Michael Phelps swam the 100m butterfly at a measly 4.4mph. Every attempt costs a huge amount of energy, around 770 to 1900 calories. Worse still, the water that rushes into the whale’s mouth produces so much drag that it grinds to a virtual halt. To lunge again, the whale needs to build up speed from a standstill, and it will do so around three or four times on a single ten-minute dive.

Nonetheless, when Goldbogen plugged the data from his recorders into a simulation of a feeding whale, he found that the lunge is staggeringly efficient. Despite the massive outlay in energy, the whale easily recoups anywhere from 6 to 240 times that amount, depending on how big it is and how tightly packed its krill targets are.
If a big whale attacks a particularly dense swarm, it can swallow up to 500 kilograms of krill, eating 457,000 calories in a single monster mouthful and getting back almost 200 times the amount it burned in the attempt. A smaller whale lunging at a sparse collection of krill would only get around 8,000 calories, but that’s still 8 times more than what it burned. Even when Goldbogen accounted for the energy needed to dive in search of prey, the whales still regained 3 to 90 times as much energy as they spent.

For comparison, sea otters get around 4 calories for every one they burn, and Weddell seals get around 10. If blue whales happen across a particularly thick glut of prey, their feeding efficiency is about ten times greater than for any other sea-going mammal.

All of these record-breaking numbers are probably a pale shadow of the true efficiency of a hunting whale, because he was being fairly conservative about the krill in his simulations. Photographs of krill suggest that these animals can gather in swarms a hundred (or even a thousand) times greater than those that Goldbogen used. If a whale swam into one of these swarms with mouth agape, it might even recover 1000 times more energy than it spent.

An efficient lifestyle is a big boon to the blue whale. Every year, it migrates from rich feeding areas close to the pole to relatively poorer mating areas towards the equator. If it’s to survive, it needs to feed as effectively as it can during the summer to build up a thick layer of blubbery reserves to fuel it through the harsh food-starved winter.

Reference: Journal of Experimental Biology 

Leopard Mother and Cub

Photograph by Beverly Joubert

A leopard takes hold of her dangling cub in the Okavango Delta. The leopard is so strong and comfortable in trees that it often hauls its kills into the branches.


Big Cats Initiative

National Geographic is working to avert the extinction of lions, tigers, and other big cats with the Big Cats Initiative, a comprehensive program that supports innovative projects. Learn how you can help save these animals.

Cicada

Cicadas are probably best known for their buzzing and clicking noises, which can be amplified by multitudes of insects into an overpowering hum.

Males produce this species-specific noise with vibrating membranes on their abdomens. The sounds vary widely and some species are more musical than others. Though cicada noises may sound alike to humans, the insects use different calls to express alarm or attract mates.

Cicadas are also famous for their penchant for disappearing entirely for many years, only to reappear in force at a regular interval. There are some 3,000 cicada species, but only some share this behavior (the 17-year cicada is an example).

Others are called annuals because, although individuals have multi-year lifecycles, some adults appear every year. The dog day cicada, for example, emerges each year in mid-summer.

When young cicada nymphs hatch from their eggs, they dig themselves into the ground to suck the liquids of plant roots. They spend several early life stages in these underground burrows before surfacing as adults. The process varies in length but often takes a number of years.

Periodical cicadas do not create destructive plagues, as some locusts do, though tens or hundreds of thousands of insects may crowd into a single acre. Large swarms can overwhelm and damage young trees by feeding and laying eggs, but older trees usually escape without serious damage.

Cicadas are members of the order Homoptera and are physically distinguished by their stout bodies, broad heads, clear-membrane wings, and large compound eyes.

The insect's amazing lifestyle has been a source of fascination since ancient times. Several cultures, such as the ancient Chinese, regarded these insects as powerful symbols of rebirth.

Broome tourist survives tussle with 5m saltwater crocodile .

A DRUNKEN Broome visitor is lucky to be alive after climbing onto the back of a 5m crocodile and trying to ride the giant predator. 

The man, who had earlier been turfed out of a Broome tavern for being drunk, told police he climbed into the croc's enclosure at a local crocodile park because he wanted to give him a pat.

``He made his way into the crocodile park and then climbed into the compound with a large, male 5m saltwater croc named Fatso,'' Sergeant Roger Haynes told AAP.

``He has attempted to sit on its back and the croc has taken offence to that and has spun around and bit him on the right leg.

``For an unknown reason, the crocodile has let him go and he's managed to scale the fence and exit the park.''
Crocodile park owner Malcolm Douglas said the man was incredibly lucky to survive his brush with the 800kg "Fatso'' who was relocated about 20 years ago from a Northern Territory river where it had been attacking boats.
Mr Douglas said the cooler night in Broome had probably made "Fatso'' a bit more sluggish than he would normally have been, contributing to the miracle escape from a near-certain fatal attack.

The man managed to clamber back over the perimeter fence and made his way back to the nearby tavern to get help after the attack, about 10.15pm on Monday.

Mr Douglas said it is believed the man is an itinerant drifter. Earlier Police said they thought he had been in the town for several weeks.

Sgt Haynes said the man was extremely lucky to be alive.

``No person in their right mind would try to sit on a 5m crocodile,'' he said.

``We do know he's from the eastern states and he doesn't seem to have a very good understanding of the nature of saltwater crocs in the Kimberley.''

He said the 36-year-old had some ``very nasty lacerations'' and would spend some time in hospital, as croc wounds are prone to infection.

``Saltwater crocodiles . . . once they get hold of you, are not renowned for letting you go. He's lucky to have escaped with his life.''

Earth is much younger than previously though

The Earth could be younger and took more than three times longer to form than has been previously thought, according to a new study.

Researchers have calculated that the planet could have taken far longer to form following the birth of the solar system 4.567 billion years ago than scientists have previously believed.

By comparing chemical isotopes from the Earth's mantle with those from meteorites, geologists at the University of Cambridge claim the planet reached its current size around 4.467 billion years ago.

Scientists have in the past estimated that the Earth's development, a process known as accretion where gas, dust and other material clumped together to form the planet, happened over just 30 million years.

But the new research suggests this process may have taken up to 100 million years – more than three times longer than previous estimates.

Writing in the journal Nature Geoscience, however, the researchers claim that while the Earth probably grew to 60% of its current size relatively quickly, the process may well have then slowed, taking about 100 million years in all.

“The whole issue hinges on working out how long it took for the core of the Earth to form, which is one of the big unknowns in this area of science,” said Dr John Rudge, one of the authors at the University of Cambridge.

“One of the problems has been that scientists usually presume Earth's accretion happened at an exponentially decreasing rate.

"We believe that the process may not have been that simple and that it could well have been a much more staggered, stop-start affair.”

The accretion of the Earth involved a series of collisions between large pieces of debris, known as planetary embryos.

The huge levels of heat created by these impacts caused the interior of the growing planet to melt, creating the molten metal core at the centre of the Earth and the mantle above it.

Many scientists believe that the final part of the process happened when a body roughly the size of Mars collided with the Earth and caused part of the planet to break off, forming the Moon.

The research team used measurements of the levels of chemical isotopes created during the accretion of the Earth, providing a form of geological clock.

The Earth's isotope levels were then compared with samples taken from meteorites that have hit our planet in modern history.

These meteorites are a kind of time capsule that have isotope levels similar to those present in the original material that clumped together when the solar system formed.

Differences in the isotopic values of Earth tungsten and that taken from the meteorites was able to provide the researchers with information about how long accretion took.

Dr Rudge and his colleagues used computer models to calculate how the Earth could have formed to match the levels of isotope decay found in the planet's mantle.

They showed that the Earth almost certainly could not have formed within 30 million years but instead grew very quickly, reaching two-thirds of its size within about 10 to 40 million years.

The accretion process then slowed and took up to another 70 million years to complete.

“If correct, that would mean the Earth was about 100 million years in the making altogether,” said Dr Rudge said.

“We estimate that makes it about 4.467 billion years old – a mere youngster compared with the 4.537 billion-year-old planet we had previously imagined.”

Amazon river dolphins being slaughtered for bait

RIO DE JANEIRO – The bright pink color gives them a striking appearance in the muddy jungle waters. That Amazon river dolphins are also gentle and curious makes them easy targets for nets and harpoons as they swim fearlessly up to fishing boats.

Now, their carcasses are showing up in record numbers on riverbanks, their flesh torn away for fishing bait, causing researchers to warn of a growing threat to a species that has already disappeared in other parts of the world.
"The population of the river dolphins will collapse if these fishermen are not stopped from killing them," said Vera da Silva, the top aquatic mammals expert at the government's Institute of Amazonian Research. "We've been studying an area of 11,000 hectares (27,000 acres) for 17 years, and of late the population is dropping 7 percent each year."
That translates to about 1,500 dolphins killed annually in the part of the Mamiraua Reserve of the western Amazon where da Silva studies the mammals.

Da Silva said researchers first began finding dolphin carcasses along riverbanks around the year 2000. They were obviously killed by human hands: sliced open and quartered, with their flesh cut away.

The killings are becoming more common, researchers and environmental agents say. Even the government acknowledges that there is a problem. It's already illegal to kill the dolphins without government permission — as with all wild animals in the Amazon. But little is being done to stop it.

Less than five agents are tasked with protecting wildlife in a jungle region covering the western two-thirds of Amazonas state, which is more than twice the size of Texas, according to the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (Ibama), the enforcement arm of the Environment Ministry.
"It's a matter of priority, and right now the government is focusing on deforestation," said Ibama's Andrey Silva. "The killings of these dolphins exists — it's a fact."
The dolphins are attractive to anglers for their fatty flesh that is a highly effective bait for catching a type of catfish called piracatinga.
Consumption in neighboring Colombia is driving the slaughter. Some 884 tons of the fish came from Brazil in 2007, according to the Colombian Institute for Rural Development. That jumped to 1,430 tons in 2008 and spiked to 2,153 tons in 2009.
Simple economics exacerbates the problem: Killing dolphins is free, and their meat is valuable. Using the flesh from one carcass, fishermen can catch up to 1,100 pounds (500 kilograms) of piracatinga. According to da Silva and other researchers, they can sell the catfish for 50 cents per kilogram, translating into $550 for just a few nights' work — about double Brazil's monthly minimum wage.

"It's attracting a lot of poor people to this region to kill the dolphins and make easy money," said Antonio Miguel Migueis, a dolphin researcher with the Federal University of Western Para since 2005.

So far it's impossible to quantify the exact impact fisherman are having on the river dolphins — little research has been done to study the killings or even the overall population of the dolphins in the Amazon.
But activists warn that waiting for exhaustive studies could mean the dolphin population would be irreversibly devastated by the time the work is complete.

"This is most definitely a threat to the future of this river dolphin species," said Alison Wood, with the England-based Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society. "This is a relatively new threat, but clearly an extremely serious one."
Migueis said he warned Ibama and other authorities numerous times about the dolphin slaughter, but his reports fell on deaf ears.
Growing up to 8 feet (2.5 meters) long and weighing as much as 400 pounds (180 kilograms), Amazon river dolphins are the largest of four species known to exist in South America and Asia.

Their genetic siblings have already died off elsewhere: The Yangzte river dolphin in China was declared functionally extinct in 2006, the victim of pollution, overfishing and increased boat traffic.

Meanwhile, the International Union of Conservation of Nature lists the Ganges river dolphin in India as endangered, and the Irrawaddy river dolphin in Bangladesh as vulnerable.

Scientists believe river dolphins likely arrived in the Amazon during the Middle Miocene era 16 million years ago, when ocean levels were high around the world, and the sea inundated what is now lush rain forest.

For centuries they have been revered by locals and protected by myth. According to one tale, the dolphins transform into handsome men and leave the water at night, seducing and impregnating local women before returning to the river. Many simply consider it bad luck to kill them, given their supposed magical attributes.
But today, the quick payoff is trumping legend and superstition.

"Killing the dolphins is a fast and easy way for the fisherman to make money. It costs nothing but time," Vera da Silva said. "It's ugly because these dolphins have a folkloric value in the Amazon, and all that is disappearing for the sake of using them as bait."

The world's most giant underwater museum

Visitors to a national park in Cancun could soon come face-to-face with life-sized sculptures in human form fixed in the seabed, as plans to create what could be the world's largest underwater museum start to become a reality.

On 19 November, four sculptures are due to be submerged in the Caribbean waters, off the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico's eastern state of Quintana Roo.

They will be the first of many hundreds of figures, which will be dotted around an area of the region's national park.

The sculptures will be made of PH-neutral concrete, which, it is hoped, will attract algae and marine life and give the local ecosystem a boost.

According to the park's director Jaime Gonzalez, one of the aims is to reduce the pressure on the natural habitat in other areas of the park by luring tourists away from existing coral reef, which has suffered damage from hurricanes and human activity.

Some 750,000 people visit the park a year, said Mr Gonzalez, with about 450,000 of them visiting Punta Nizuc, an area of just four hectares.

Fewer visitors could allow the coral in the area to regenerate, giving it a greater chance of withstanding hurricane damage, said Mr Gonzalez.

One of the first sculptures to be installed is called La Jardinera de la Esperanza, which features a young girl lying on garden patio steps, cultivating pot plants. Situated just four metres below the surface, it will include propagated coral that is expected to prosper in its new environment.

"It all happens rather quickly - within two weeks, we will see green algae," says artist Jason deCaires Taylor, who is in charge of the project. "Then within a few months, juvenile algae will appear and the project will progress from there."


The sculptures have been designed to be durable and, according to Mr deCaires Taylor, will have no detrimental effect on the local ecosystem.

"We carried out an environmental survey beforehand," he said.

The conservation of coral is at the forefront of many environmentalists' minds.

Coral reefs make up less than a quarter of 1% of the ocean's floor. Yet they are a key source of food, income and coastal protection for around 500 million people worldwide.

The project has an initial budget of $350,000 (£210,000), with a significant proportion of the funding being provided by the Mexican government. The rest has been donated by individuals and organisations with an interest in promoting the area.

Mr Gonzalez said: "We already have $160,000 but if this is successful, then who knows when the project will end."

Mr deCaires Taylor is travelling around the country looking for people from various backgrounds to pose for the exhibition.

"The other day I was in a cafe and saw a really fascinating man with strong character lines and expressions, so in my bad Spanish went over to him to explain about the project. Next thing, he was in his underpants in my studio being cast in plaster alginate."

One aim of the subterranean museum is to attract more tourism to the region.

This year, 4.6 million international tourists visited Mexico compared with 5.2 million in the same period last year.

Robert Diaz, president of one of the project's key sponsors, Cancun Nautical Association, said the area had been badly affected by the recession and other factors, such as Mexico's narcotics war and negative publicity surrounding the H1N1 (swine flu) virus.

Dr Paul Jepson, a lecturer in conservation at the UK's University of Oxford, welcomed the idea of the museum.

"Conservationists need to find different ways of engaging with the world. Artists should get involved in environmental matters so it is not just scientists trying to get the message out there," he said.

The idea of underwater museums are not new. A number already exist around the world.

In Egypt, Unesco has voiced its support for a planned underwater museum in Alexandria, which would host treasures belonging to Queen Cleopatra. And in May this year China's Baiheliang Underwater Museum in Chongqing opened to the public.

Made from a natural ridge in the Yangtze River, visitors can see inscriptions by poets and writers, some of which are thousands of years old.

Source:Flepedia 

Study links bee decline to cell phones

                      

London, England (CNN) -- A new study has suggested that cell phone radiation may be contributing to declines in bee populations in some areas of the world.

Bee populations dropped 17 percent in the UK last year, according to the British Bee Association, and nearly 30 percent in the United States says the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Parasitic mites called varroa, agricultural pesticides and the effects of climate change have all been implicated in what has been dubbed "colony collapse disorder" (CCD).

But researchers in India believe cell phones could also be to blame for some of the losses.

In a study at Panjab University in Chandigarh, northern India, researchers fitted cell phones to a hive and powered them up for two fifteen-minute periods each day.

After three months, they found the bees stopped producing honey, egg production by the queen bee halved, and the size of the hive dramatically reduced.

It's not just the honey that will be lost if populations plummet further. Bees are estimated to pollinate 90 commercial crops worldwide. Their economic value in the UK is estimated to be $290 million per year and around $12 billion in the U.S.

Andrew Goldsworthy, a biologist from the UK's Imperial College, London, has studied the biological effects of electromagnetic fields. He thinks it's possible bees could be affected by cell phone radiation.

The reason, Goldsworthy says, could hinge on a pigment in bees called cryptochrome.

"Animals, including insects, use cryptochrome for navigation," Goldsworthy told CNN.

"They use it to sense the direction of the earth's magnetic field and their ability to do this is compromised by radiation from [cell] phones and their base stations. So basically bees do not find their way back to the hive."

Goldsworthy has written to the UK communications regulator OFCOM suggesting a change of phone frequencies would stop the bees being confused.

"It's possible to modify the signal coming from the [cell] phones and the base station in such a way that it doesn't produce the frequencies that disturb the cryptochrome molecules," Goldsworthy said.

"So they could do this without the signal losing its ability to transmit information."

But the UK's Mobile Operators Association -- which represents the UK's five mobile network operators -- told CNN: "Research scientists have already considered possible factors involved in CCD and have identified the areas for research into the causes of CCD which do not include exposure to radio waves."

Norman Carreck, Scientific director of the International Bee research Association at the UK's University of Sussex says it's still not clear how much radio waves affect bees.

"We know they are sensitive to magnetic fields. What we don't know is what use they actually make of them. And no one has yet demonstrated that honey bees use the earth's magnetic field when navigating," Carreck said.

Blood falls, Natural Phenomenon

This is another weird natural phenomenon. And extremely rare. This phenomenon came from source of water flowing in a waterfall. Have the shape as blood that flows continuously but slowly. This phenomenon happen is Antarctica in the Mc Murdo valley. There was a geologist found this places in 1911. He thought that the red blood from the red algae. But it was more than expected.

The story behind this phenomenon is start from two millions years ago. Taylor glacier was trapped under the water stream and it containing ancient microbes. This microbes live without water, oxygen, and light. The condition over there give a red color similar to iron in the blood. Scientists estimate these fluids such as blood came from ancient microbes which trapped in the crevasse.

This phenomenon is still become mystery until now.

Source:Felpedia 

Summer Solstice 2010

 

The first day of summer officially kicked off last Monday at 7:28 a.m. ET, it was the beginning of the summer solstice and the longest day of the year—at least in the Northern Hemisphere.


The summer solstice is a result of the Earth's north-south axis being tilted 23.5 degrees relative to the sun. The tilt causes different amounts of sunlight to reach different regions of the planet.


Last Monday the North Pole was tipped closer to the sun than on any other day of 2010. The opposite holds true for the Southern Hemisphere, for which last Monday was the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year.

As a result, the sun appeared at its highest point in the sky at noon—it was mostly directed in an overhead position—in the Northern Hemisphere.
That doesn't mean the sun will be exactly overhead at noon for everyone, said James Bell, an astronomer at Cornell University in New York State.


It depends on the viewer's latitude—the sun is only shining down directly overhead at noon at the Tropic of Cancer. "It's still at a low angle if you're up in Alaska," Bell explained.

No matter where you are in the Northern Hemisphere, the path of the sun across the sky—which rises in the lead-up to the first day of summer, then begins descending over the rest of the summer—seems not to change for the few days before and after the summer solstice.
In reality, the sun's position is still changing, but at a slower rate.

Summer Solstice Wobbles around the Calendar

While the June solstice generally occurs on the same day every year, the date does change every once in a while. For example, in 2008, the summer solstice occurred on June 20.

This date shifting is a result of the discrepancy between a human calendar year—which is usually counted as 365 days—and an astronomical year, which is 365.25 days.

Our leap year system—which adds an extra day to the calendar every four years—ensures our calendars are accurate, but it also causes the solstice date to flop around a bit.

"It's nothing astronomical changing. What's changing is the human side of it," Bell said.

Solstice Is Longest Day of the Year—Not Hottest

On the summer solstice, the Northern Hemisphere receives more sunlight than on any other day of the year, but that doesn't mean the first day of summer is also the hottest day of summer.


Earth's oceans and atmosphere act like heat sinks, absorbing and reradiating the sun's rays over time. So even though the planet is absorbing lots of sunlight on the summer solstice, it takes several weeks to release it. As a result, the hottest days of summer usually occur in July or August.
"If you think about turning up an oven—it takes it a long time to heat up," explained Robert Howell, an astronomer at the University of Wyoming. "And after you turn it off, it takes a while for it to cool down. It's the same with the Earth."

First Day of Summer Sparked Ancient Celebrations

The summer solstice is recognized and often celebrated in many cultures around the world, in both the past and present.

The ancient Egyptians, for example, built the Great Pyramids so that the solstice sunset, when viewed from the Sphinx, sets precisely between two of the Pyramids.

The Inca of South America celebrated the summer solstice with a ceremony called Inti Raymi, which included food offerings and sacrifices of animals and maybe even people.

A man makes an offering during a ritual for the celebration of the "Inti Raymi" (Festival of the Sun), on June 21, in Cali, department of Valle del Cauca, Colombia. AFP / Getty Images / Luis Robayo

And perhaps most famously, Stonehenge in the United Kingdom has been associated with the winter and summer solstices for about 5,000 years.

Summer Solstice at Stonehenge on June 21, near Amesbury, England. Getty Images / Matt Cardy

Observers in the center of the standing stones can watch the summer solstice sun rise over the Heel Stone, which stands just outside Stonehenge's stone circles.


For many of the ancients, though, the summer solstice wasn't just an excuse to party or pray—it was essential to their well-being.

Associated with agriculture, the summer solstice was a reminder that a turning point in the growing season had been reached.

"The calendar was very important—much more important than it is now," said Ricky Patterson, an astronomer at the University of Virginia. "People wanted to know what was going to happen so that they could be ready."

The Sun Plays Music: Scientists

The sun has been the inspiration for hundreds of songs, but now scientists have discovered that the star at the center of our solar system produces its own music.

Astronomers at the University of Sheffield have managed to record for the first time the eerie musical harmonies produced by the magnetic field in the outer atmosphere of the sun.

They found that huge magnetic loops that have been observed coiling away from the outer layer of the sun's atmosphere, known as coronal loops, vibrate like strings on a musical instrument.
In other cases they behave more like soundwaves as they travel through a wind instrument.

Using satellite images of these loops, which can be over 60,000 miles long, the scientists were able to recreate the sound by turning the visible vibrations into noises and speeding up the frequency so it is audible to the human ear.

Professor Robertus von Fáy-Siebenbürgen, head of the solar physics research group at Sheffield University, said: "It was strangely beautiful and exciting to hear these noises for the first time from such a large and powerful source.

"It is a sort of music as it has harmonics.

"It is providing us with a new way of learning about the sun and giving us a new insight into the physics that goes on at in the sun's outer layers where temperatures reach millions of degrees."

The coronal loops are thought to be involved in the production of solar flares that fling highly charged particles out into space, creating a phenomenon known as space weather.

When the sun's activity, and thus solar flare production, increases, the resulting "space storm" can have catastrophic results here on earth, destroying electronic equipment, overheating power grids and damaging satellites.

Nasa warned last week that the sun's activity is starting to increase following an extended period of low activity and is on course to throw out unprecedented levels of magnetic energy into the solar system by 2013.

Professor Fáy-Siebenbürgen said that studying the "music of the sun" would provide new ways of understanding and predicting solar flares before they happen.

The coronal loops vibrate from side to side because they are "plucked" rather like guitar strings by the blast waves from explosions on the surface of the sun.

The scientists also found the loops vibrate backwards and forwards in a way that mimics the acoustic waves in a wind instrument.

Professor Fáy-Siebenbürgen's research has been revealed as the University of Sheffield launches a new project, called Project Sunshine, aimed at finding new ways to harness and understand the power of the sun.

He said: "These loops are oscillating like the strings on a guitar or the air in a wind instrument. Over time the waves die away and that is telling us new things about the physics in the sun's atmosphere."