Magnetic Waves Clue To Decades-Long Coronal Heating Mystery
Tuesday, October 15, 2013 - 23:40
in Astronomy & Space
Researchers have found evidence that magnetic waves in a polar coronal hole contain enough energy to heat the corona and that they also deposit most of their energy at sufficiently low heights for the heat to spread throughout the corona. The observations help to answer a 70-year-old solar physics conundrum about the unexplained extreme temperature of the Sun's corona – known as the coronal heating problem. The team analyzed data from the Extreme Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrometer onboard the Japanese satellite Hinode. They used observations of a polar coronal hole, a region of the Sun where the magnetic fields lines stretch from the solar surface far into interplanetary space. read more