(Source Google-10 years ago, unknown today)
4 years must have passed for the shock to subside from the appearance of these objects. The first showed up around March of 2012 and the respective SOHO video can be seen here. A second video which (clearly now) shows the strange behavior of this object can be seen here.
Worried, 2 years ago, I sent an email to a SOHO rep, who replied that it's 'just'[sic] a 'wave-like fluctuation-disturbance' on the Sun's Corona or a 'Coronal cavity'. Characteristically, he said: 'It's cool!'. He then proceeded to point me at a video a friend of his from NASA made about this, here.
I don't know about you but I am not convinced by the explanations given in the above video, many strange questions notwithstanding, such as the strange shape(s) coincidence - sphere vs filaments - which look like siphons anyway, the conditions at their boundary which demarcate the two shapes vs tunnel viewed from a specific view angle, the detachment at tremendous speeds vs 'explosion' in the Corona, etc.
I am not a professional Astronomer but needless to say you don't need to be a Nuclear Physicist to see with your own eyes on the video that whatever this thing is, it enacts operations of siphoning/pumping/sucking plasma/energy FROM the Sun. Hence, several issues are raised, some of which I (worriedly) present here:
Such a visual forwards to some really humongous parameters. Wouldn't you say that the sphere diameter is roughly 1/10-th the diameter of the Sun? Let's say 1/20-th to be sure. Using R=G*m/c2 for its Schwarzschild radius, plugging in the appropriate constants and solving for m, gives a dm~32.6*msol.
So, whatever the heck that thing is, it looks like it's carrying the equivalent of 32 Solar masses, which is in itself mind blowing. Never mind the thousand of all the other related questions for Astrophysicists, such as:
Or, some related questions:
Note that a shorter lifespan for the Sun implies a shorter lifespan for Earth, etc.
In any case, to me it looks as though scientists have no clue about what it actually is, so its entire behavior is highly suspicious (possibly related to these events?). It resembles a giant cosmic parasite-tick/mosquito, which for some reason decided to come very close to the Sun and start sucking plasma. How much such an act is 'acceptable' or 'suspicious' to the denizens of the local Solar System doesn't seem to be its big concern and that's the highly suspicious part of any hypothesis about its origins.
Neither do the scientists seem particularly concerned about how an object having the mass of the equivalent of 32 Solar masses was able to come so close to the Sun, putting itself in Heliocentric orbit at a point where the temperature exceeds 2 million degrees K.
All the above conspire over the fact that it's probably nothing else than a relatively 'small' (32 Solar m is relatively little for a) black hole, which seems to have the capability to control its own gravitational field on will. It cannot possibly be anything else approaching the Sun so closely. Anything else at such a distance would be instantly vaporized, because of the tremendous temperatures of the Corona.
Imagine therefore what would happen, if this thing 'decided' instead of the Sun to come to Earth and demanded similar "refueling" or "recharging" on the surface of the Earth. Not one speck of dust would remain for us to find after it.
The total life-span of any star in the Universe is a function of its Hydrogen mass at its time of birth - Nuclear ignition (as a star). Its subsequent development and orbit in the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram is (pre-)determined exlusively by the amount of Hydrogen it fuses into Helium every second. Sometime later in its life the Hydrogen ends and the star converts to a Red Giant. Dispensing with the details which can be found on any text on star evolution, at some point it eventually becomes a Nova or Supernova. For the Sun, this is approximately 5 billion years into the future. Or better, was 5 bil. years, as this thing that came obviously drained the Sun a certain amount of Hydrogen. Therefore, if the Solar System had such and such an amount of years lifespan, it now has obviously less because of the sucked-up lost mass.
In other words, this black hole sped-up (somewhat) the natural destruction of the system by approximately an amount of time equal to the proportion of the mass sucked relative to the Sun's total mass. Great!
I wouldn't want this object/thing/whatever the heck it is anywhere close to my neighborhood, for arbitrary values of 'close' or anything from 1 to 250 AUs. It instinctually creeps me out in the same sense that a dog tick does. If nothing else, it definitely looks diabolic[1.]. I also don't particularly like uninvited guests who without permission engage in obligatory tick or mosquito-like behavior, sucking energy - for whatever reason from objects which generate energy crucial to my physical survival. Even if I am not going to be around to see the difference.
All of the above is of course just an instinct - mostly based on my aversion to blood-sucking pests and parasites but the fact remains that this is a very strange and unusual phenomenon raising some pretty suspicious questions indeed. Hopefully someone will come up with a better explanation than the one given by NASA as just a 'Coronal fluctuation-disturbance/cavity' thing.