One of my favorite astro-photographers, Bray Falls, published his initial 2024 eclipse image
This is a composite image, of photos taken at exposures ranging from .001seconds up to 4seconds. I am particularly struck by the filaments reaching out from the Sun. Each planet is connected to the Sun through these filaments. Matter, energy, and information are transferred out and back through these filaments, and much else we will learn about in the future. We have known about these coronal filaments for decades, but only recently learned that they stretch out through the solar system.
The body of the Sun. What is the body of the Sun? It is much larger than that bright disc in the sky. The entire known solar system is part of the Body of the Sun. Here are two more eclipse photos from Bray Falls, the left from 2017, the right from 2023.
Notice the polar regions in the 2017 picture, I have highlighted them in yellow.
This image shows that there are two distinct structures: the polar lines, which reach out of the North and South poles of the Sun, and perpendicular to this a more complex skirt in which the planets live. The polar lines extend out and around forming a torus, whose size is not yet known, but the orbits of the planets are certainly very small in comparison. From this point of view, the body of the Sun is an enormous torus. This torus shape appears as the basic plan for the electromagnetic body of people, planets, stars, and galaxies. That is worth pondering. I do not know of any other structure that appears in organisms over such a range of sizes.
Our senses have skewed our conceptions of our planet. We think the solid part is the “actual” Earth, while the much larger magnetic fields are not “really” important. Nothing could be farther from the truth. That would be like saying that your skeleton is your “actual” body, while the blood & brains are not really important. We can bring the same thoughts to the Sun: We are all living inside the body of the Sun. All the planets and everything in our solar system is living inside the body of the Sun. If we were to travel to that bright orb we see in the sky, we would be traveling to the heart of the Sun’s body, or the Brain, or nucleus of the Sun. The actual Sun is something of almost incomprehensible grandeur.
The body of the Sun stretches at least all the way to what we call the Heliopause, but might even stretch further. It is an open question whether the stars are tight packed like cells in our body, or whether there is plenty of space between them like farm houses scattered across the Midwest. Every decade we get new data showing more connection between the stars, so if someone tells you that there is any sort of settled science about how stars are packed in the galaxy, do not feel obligated to believe them.
Getting back to the solar filaments. What are they? They are plasma structures. Unless you work with electrical plasma it can be difficult to have intuitions about their behaviors. When plasma is imbued with electric & magnetic fields and currents, membranes and tubes are formed. See the picture below, of the nebula called M2-9.
These shells are semi-permeable membranes, containing and segregating regions of different molecules, different energies, different magnetic signatures, etc. Some material can get in, some is trapped inside. We know more about how biological membranes do this than how plasma membranes do. All living systems need to carefully manage their insides vs outsides, which is the job of membranes.
Living systems also need to have some kind of tubing for a transport system. Plasma naturally forms tubes.
The membranes and tubes formed in plasma are also semipermeable. The filaments that stretch out of the Sun maintain their separateness all the way out to each planet. The figure below is a cartoon of these solar filaments. The right panel shows what they look like in cross section, and there is very good evidence that the filaments originate from the granules on the photosphere.
We must then imagine a million filaments reaching out from the Sun, going to all the planets, and also reaching far above and below to make the torus of the larger Sun-body.
If you look back at figure 1, you can see that the fibers keep a constant thickness, and also tend to bundle together rather than disperse. My take on the data is that the individual fibers grow out of the Sun over hours, they bundle together and travel out to their destinations. I expect there are also return filaments, though no one is looking for those yet. This gives a very lively and very structured image of the space between the planets.
In 1900 solar physicists taught that there is NOTHING between us and the Sun. At the dawn of the satellite age, “astronomers were shocked” that the space between the Earth and Sun is filled with charged particles and magnetic fields. Since then astronomers have begrudgingly admitted that the solar atmosphere is structured. We now see that it is very, very structured. If electrical engineering were made required courses in astronomy degrees, the field would change in one generation, because many of the behaviors we see in space are simple manifestations of electrical systems in plasma.
Do you remember those anatomy drawings, where you need one drawing for the skeletal system, one drawing for the circulatory system, one for the nerves, etc? Every system in the body needs to permeate the entire body. Everything needs to go everywhere. Blood needs to get to every cell, nerves need to reach everywhere, lymph must collect from everywhere. The solar system is equally complex. The filaments seen around the disc-of-the-Sun during an eclipse are just one system in the Body of the Sun - and the filaments must reach everywhere in that body of the Sun.
Bonus
Below is an image of the galaxy NGC 7557. Optical image from Hubble is combined with radio data from VLA. The whispy blue lines are the magnetic fields of the galaxy. Do not take the lines TOO literally, as the magnetic field is difficult to map exactly, but it sure gives the right idea…what is the body of the galaxy?
This was a very interesting read and wonderful images of the eclipse!
"We are all living inside the body of the Sun"
I find a plasma ball is a great analogy for our solar system, with the Sun as the anode, if you could insert some little orbitting ball bearings into the plasma ball, you would see the little filaments of current dancing between them exactly like Birkeland currents between planets. I have often wondered if Jupiter's Great Red Spot is evidence of an unseen moon, tidally locked and concealed by the upper atmosphere, the static focus of a constant storm?
"Living systems also need to have some kind of tubing for a transport system. Plasma naturally forms tubes."
This is spot on! This is the key to how veins and nerves and all biological tubular structures grow, they form around the currents in the plasma.
"...good evidence that the filaments originate from the granules on the photosphere."
Ye olde anode tufts, and in one of Gerald Pollack's vid.'s there is a similar cross-section of steam rising off a cup of hot tea, similar again to how clouds/sprites/elves etc. form in atmospheric layers and how we, in meditation can extend our own "filament" high enough to tap into the universal mains supply - possible when the Sun is in Aries and the soul is (ideally) purified. Which is what every religion with an intact metaphysic doctrine has always been trying to say without saying it.
But for those uncomfortable in the consideration of the size, depth, breadth etc. of the universe it's perhaps best not to try. Was it Kepler who said the universe couldn't be eternal... because he was unable to visualise it and therefore it *had* to be finite for the sake of his sanity?
"I expect there are also return filaments, though no one is looking for those yet." ... "The polar lines extend out and around forming a torus, whose size is not yet known."
All the religious pictures of JC looking wistfully at the viewer with a finger pointing to his heart glowing like a golden Sun is the precise feeling in total Realisation. One's heart turns to molten gold as the mind expands exponentially. Most beautiful, extraordinary sensory experience known to Man and arguably the whole point of life.
So anyway, if the Sun pumps energy to the rest of the solar system in the same way the heart pumps blood to our systems, the galaxy could be illustrated as a mitochondrial cell of the breathing, conscious universe with the First Principle as the brains of the operation. Equal in meaning to Purusha, (poorly translated as Essence), and Prakriti (Substance, or cognitive physical nature of being (also difficult to translate)).
"Everything needs to go everywhere." "What is the body of the galaxy?"
My next post due is how the brain is separated in to sections, each with relays to specific body parts. In natural (not medicinal) healing, certain bacteria is used for certain organs & tissues while viruses are deployed for others- there is no crossing between membranes in these cases; the brain maintains an ordered and interconnected chaos in the body, as does God/Primary Source as the galaxy's creative principle.