Solving the Scorching Mystery of the Sun’s Erupting Plasma Jets

By -


Source:  By Nicholas St. Fleur, The New York Times


Excerpt: Spiky bursts of plasma called spicules swirl around the surface of the sun. Millions erupt every moment, spurting solar material some 6,000 miles high at speeds of about 60 miles per second. “These things are very violent,” said Bart De Pontieu, a research scientist with Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Lab in Palo Alto, Calif. “The gas in spicules is about 10,000 degrees and they travel the length of California in just a minute or so.” Scientists have studied spicules for decades, but were not sure how the plasma jets formed. Now, Dr. De Pontieu and his colleagues think they have solved the searing mystery. They published their findings Thursday in the journal Science. ...they created a computer simulation that reconstructed the conditions between the sun’s surface and its atmosphere, where spicules form. Powerful magnetic fields are created in the interior of the sun. There, the high density keeps them tangled and tamed. But near the surface, the magnetic fields can use neutral particles, atoms that do not carry an electric charge, to diffuse into the sun’s atmosphere. The fields enter a reddish layer called the chromosphere where their violent nature is unleashed. “It’s a sling shot effect,” said Mats Carlsson, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Oslo in Norway, and co-author of the paper. The density in the chromosphere is significantly lower than in the sun’s interior, so the magnetic fields are no longer suppressed and are able to straighten out. As they unwind and release their tension, they fling hot plasma at incredible speeds, creating the spicules. The spicules surge thousands of miles high, passing through the chromosphere and into the sun’s corona before collapsing....

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/23/science/sun-plasma-jets-spicules.html

Popular posts from this blog

Stellar remains of famed 1987 supernova found at last

By -
https://www.science.org/content/article/stellar-remains-famed-1987-supernova-found-last By DANIEL CLERY , Science.  Excerpt: When a nearby star exploded in 1987, it created the first supernova visible to the naked eye in 4 centuries and became one of the most intensely studied objects in space. Now, after more than 35 years of searching, researchers have finally discovered the cinder left behind. Using NASA’s new giant space telescope JWST, astronomers spotted  glowing gas at the center of the blast that can only have been energized by something hot and compact inside it , they report this week in Science. They believe a neutron star, all that remains of the shattered star, is responsible.... 
Read more

Planets around dead stars offer glimpse of the Solar System’s future—after the Sun swallows us up

By -
https://www.science.org/content/article/planets-around-dead-stars-offer-glimpse-solar-system-s-future-after-sun-swallows-us By JONATHAN O’CALLAGHAN , Science.  Excerpt: In about 5 billion years the Sun will balloon up into a red giant, consuming Mercury, probably Venus, and maybe even Earth. But even if the outer planets avoid being swallowed up, they might eventually get pulled in or ejected from the Solar System. A new discovery suggests they can survive intact. Using NASA’s JWST space telescope, astronomers have for the first time directly imaged planets on Solar System–like orbits around white dwarfs, the dead stars left after Sun-like stars swell into red giants and subside. The planets follow orbits resembling those of the giant planets in the outer Solar System—big enough for them to have escaped the inferno.... For GSS A Changing Cosmos chapter 1.
Read more

The Smallest Moon of Mars May Not Be What It Seemed

By -
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/25/science/mars-deimos-moon-photos.html By Jonathan O’Callaghan , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Deimos, the smaller of the two moons of Mars, might be a chip off the old block — quite literally. That’s the conclusion drawn by scientists in the United Arab Emirates, whose Hope orbiter — also called the Emirates Mars Mission and the country’s first interplanetary spacecraft — just snapped the best views of Deimos ever taken by human spacecraft. ... Mars has two irregularly shaped moons , and neither is mighty. Phobos, the larger of the two, is about 17 miles in diameter at its widest, and orbits closer to the red planet at an altitude of about 3,700 miles. Deimos is just nine miles across on its longest side, and completes an orbit of Mars every 30 hours at an altitude of 15,000 miles. The moons’ small size and quirky dimensions led to suggestions that they may be asteroids captured by Mars long ago. Not so, say researchers analyzing data recorded by Hope,
Read more