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Why Is the Sun's Corona Hotter Than the Sun's Surface?

September 29 2011 at 12:00 AM		  
 









Plasma Jets Pump Heat
into the Sun's Sizzling Corona



[linked image]




"It is a question that has plagued solar physicists for decades: Why is the outer layer of the sun's atmosphere, the region farthest from the heat-producing core, hotter than both the lower atmosphere and the sun's surface?

Various explanations have been put forth, from sound waves or magnetic waves dissipating in the upper solar atmosphere, or corona, to short bursts of energy known as nanoflares erupting as tangled magnetic field lines in the corona reconnect. Now observations from a new generation of sun-observing spacecraft are implicating a different mechanism, one that could provide the corona with a significant portion of its heat by continually delivering hot ionized gas, or plasma, to the upper atmosphere.

Short-lived fountains of plasma known as spicules, shooting up from the sun's chromosphere, or lower atmosphere, appear to play a role in heating the corona to searing temperatures at millions of degrees Kelvin, researchers have found. The group based its study on observations from NASA's new Solar Dynamics Observatory, launched in 2010, and the Japanese Hinode spacecraft, which began service in 2006. Both solar observatories are capable of taking detailed images of the sun every several seconds, the kind of quick-time observation needed to identify transient or rapidly changing phenomena":

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coronal-heating-spicules








 
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 Re: Why Is the Sun's Corona Hotter Than the Sun's Surface? Sep 29, 2011, 1:45 PM
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 The reason is "stress" in the transmission medium. Nov 3, 2011, 11:59 AM
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