Why Sun's corona is hotter than its surface decoded
October 18, 2014 11:51
Scientists have finally decoded why the Sun's million-degree corona or outermost atmosphere is so much hotter than its surface, which has baffled astronomers for decades.
A team led by Paola Testa of the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics has found new clues to the mystery of coronal heating using observations from the recently launched Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph.
The team found that miniature solar flares called "nanoflares" -- and the speedy electrons they produce -- might partly be the source of that heat, at least in some of the hottest parts of the Sun's corona.
A solar flare occurs when a patch of the Sun brightens dramatically at all wavelengths of light. During flares, solar plasma is heated to tens of millions of degrees in a matter of seconds or minutes.
A team led by Paola Testa of the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics has found new clues to the mystery of coronal heating using observations from the recently launched Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph.
The team found that miniature solar flares called "nanoflares" -- and the speedy electrons they produce -- might partly be the source of that heat, at least in some of the hottest parts of the Sun's corona.
A solar flare occurs when a patch of the Sun brightens dramatically at all wavelengths of light. During flares, solar plasma is heated to tens of millions of degrees in a matter of seconds or minutes.
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