Something Very Strange Is Happening With The Sun
Story by Sean Thiessen • Friday
The sun baffles scientists with burning questions, but the European Space Agency has taken a huge step forward in studying the heart of Earth's solar system. As reported in ScienceAlert, the ESA's Solar Orbiter is capturing the most detailed images of the sun ever recorded. Its findings support a long-held hypothesis that small magnetic field reconnections account for the Sun's immense heat.
At its surface, the Sun burns at a raging 5,500 degrees Celsius, or 9,932 degrees Fahrenheit – normal for a star of its size and kind. What has long puzzled scientists is that the temperature of the sun's atmosphere is even hotter, and it heats up more the further from the surface you get. The corona, the outermost layer of the Sun's atmosphere, caps at 2 million degrees Celsius.
This phenomenon is called coronal temperature inversion. Astronomers have long speculated that the energy produced by small magnetic field reconnections could be the source of the corona's extreme heat.
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