Two giant holes have opened up on the Sun that could send million mph winds to Earth

A giant hole has opened up on the surface of the Sun, which could soon result in solar winds measuring millions of miles per hour hurtling towards Earth.

The coronal hole measures 20 times larger than our planet and it’s the second of its type to be detected in the last week.

The solar winds will impact on Friday. The first hole triggered auroras across the sky visible from Earth, and the impact of the second is currently being monitored.

Coronal holes appear as dark patches on images of the Sun when they are taken using ultraviolet and X-rays. The holes are less dense than the rest of the star, which means that the solar wind is more easily able to escape into space.

Coronal holes allow solar winds to escape the sun more readily

The sun is a big ball of plasma. That plasma churns from the inside of the sun to its surface, and as it does, it creates magnetic fields that ebb and swell, crash and merge.

A coronal hole appears when those magnetic fields shoot straight up into space, per NASA. That makes it a lot easier for solar winds — bits of plasma from the sun — to escape into space at high speed.

Those areas are generally cooler and less dense than the surrounding hot, churning plasma, which explains why they show up as darker splotches on pictures of the sun.

If those magnetic lines are facing toward the Earth, that wind will come crashing into our atmosphere.

Auroras may get brighter — but not as bright as last week's

As these winds interact with our charged atmosphere, they can make auroras brighter. But don't expect to see them down in Florida.

When the skies lit up last week with brilliant auroras that were spotted as far south as Arizona, it wasn't only due to the coronal hole.It just so happens that several coronal mass ejections (CMEs) — huge eruptions of plasma being thrown into space — happened around the same time as the hole was facing Earth, creating a huge geomagnetic storm, which is why the effect was so strong.

In the case of this coronal hole, it's unlikely this will happen again, experts said. This is a shame for fans of auroras, but it's probably good news for planetary defense, as strong geomagnetic storms can wreak havoc on satellites, infrastructure, and radio signals.

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Winds could potentially impact Earth's magnetic field, as well as affecting satellites and technology.

The two holes were spotted by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. NASA released a statement saying: “Coronal holes are magnetically open areas that are one source of high-speed solar wind.

“They appear dark when viewed in many wavelengths of extreme ultraviolet light, such as seen here. At times, the solar wind can generate aurora at higher latitudes on Earth.”

The effects are usually not a danger to Earth, but the location of the second hole is right on the Sun's equator which makes it a different proposition.

“The shape of this coronal hole is not particularly special. However, its location makes it very interesting,” Daniel Verscharen, associate professor of space and climate physics at University College London, said in an interview with Insider.

“I would expect some fast wind from that coronal hole to come to Earth around Friday night into Saturday morning of this week.”

Meanwhile, it was recently revealed that a section of the star had left the surface and begun circulating around the top as if it were a huge polar vortex, without anyone really knowing why.

Not only that, but scientists also recently stated that it’s giving off a signal which resembles a ‘heartbeat’.