What’s the News: An international team of researchers, led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research, has learned that large magnetic waves are partly to blame for the Sun’s immensely hot corona
. The study, published in the journal Nature
, also suggests that the waves could be the driving force behind the solar wind
. What’s the Context:
The corona is the outer atmosphere of the Sun, which is only visible by the naked eye during a solar eclipse. It has fascinated solar physicists for decades because it’s over 20 times hotter than the surface of the sun—you’d expect that the further away you get from a heat source, the cooler it gets.
One possible explanation for the corona’s extreme temperature has been Alfvén waves, first proposed by Nobel Prize-winner Hannes Alfvén. Alfvén waves are high-speed magnetic oscillations thought to travel along the Sun’s magnetic field lines, transporting large ...
