Magnetic Sun Produces Hot Hot Heat

ScienceNOW ^ | 23 January 2013 | Sid Perkins

[neverdem]

Enlarge Image

A picture of heat. A high-resolution image of the solar atmosphere at extreme ultraviolet wavelengths (right) reveals details of magnetic processes (middle and lower left; bright features denote intense energy release) likely providing much of the energy that heats the corona to temperatures ranging from 2 million°C to 4 million°C. The upper-left image denotes a region seen in close-up at right.

Credit: Amy Winebarger/MSFC/NASA

If you thought the exterior of the sun was hot, check out its corona. Although our star's visible surface is less than 6000°C, its atmosphere blazes at up to 4 million°C. Now, thanks to a telescope briefly boosted high above Earth by a small rocket, astronomers have found evidence of long-theorized magnetic processes that could help explain these blistering temperatures.

One reason the sun's corona is so much hotter than its surface is comes down to a phenomenon known as wave heating, in which sound waves originating at the surface travel up through the corona. There, friction among the particles boosts the temperature, says Jonathan Cirtain, a solar physicist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. But wave heating provides only enough energy to heat the corona to about 1.5 million°C, he notes. And although most solar physicists agree that interactions among the sun's magnetic field lines play a role in heating the corona, those processes haven't been observed directly.

Now, Cirtain and his colleagues have gathered strong evidence to support the notion of a different kind of heating: magnetic heating. The team's 3.2-meter-long, 210-kilogram camera-and-telescope combo rode a rocket into space above southern New Mexico on 11 July last year, observing the sun in a narrow band of extreme ultraviolet wavelengths that is normally blocked by Earth's atmosphere. The researchers targeted that band because one particular type of atom emits radiation in that range—an iron atom in which 11 of its normal complement of 26 electrons have been stripped away, also known as Fe XII. Although those highly charged ions exist most often at a temperature of about 1.5 million°C, data simultaneously gathered from other Earth-orbiting instruments provide information about material at even higher temperatures, Cirtain says.

The team's telescope could spot features in the solar atmosphere that were only 150 kilometers across—the same resolution as being able to discern a dime at a distance of 6 km, and a sixfold improvement over instruments now orbiting Earth. And although the telescope stayed above our planet's atmosphere for only 5 minutes and was focused on only 3% of the sun's surface, it observed two different episodes where magnetic field lines strongly interacted to produce Fe XII in large quantities. In those episodes, the bending and flexing of magnetic field lines released enough energy to boost temperatures nearby to as much as 7 million°C. Such events, which likely occur on a near-continual basis in magnetically active regions of the sun's surface, provide a substantial source of heating to the whole corona, the researchers report online today in Nature.

"The new findings are a tantalizing glimpse of what is possible with such an instrument," says Peter Cargill, a solar physicist at Imperial College London. Although the small-scale details of what's going on in the solar corona are still unclear, the new findings provide data that researchers can use to test old hypotheses and develop new ones, he notes.

The team's images provide "stunning detail, but only for a few minutes," adds Karel Schrijver, a solar physicist at Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center in Palo Alto, California. Now that researchers have proven that such observations are possible, he notes, a next step might be to develop a similar instrument to orbit Earth full-time and gather data to complement the low-resolution images of the entire sun being taken by other sensors.

Cargill emphatically agrees: "It is insane not to fly such an instrument on any future mission to look at the solar corona."

[Jet Jaguar]

Nope. It's gotta be our fault the sun gets hotter.

[dr_lew]

The corona is hot, but it’s also very rarefied, so it does not represent a great reservoir of energy. When they mention magnetism, it makes me think this is some sort of compression process where the magnetic field puts the squeeze on some trapped plasma and shoots it up into the corona. Hey, great theory, I like it.

[SunkenCiv]

• The Sun: A Great Ball of Iron?

  07/17/2002 11:33:32 PM PDT· by per loin· 65 replies· 680+ views

  Science Daily

  Source: University Of Missouri-Rolla (http://www.umr.edu) Date: Posted 7/17/2002 The Sun: A Great Ball Of Iron? For years, scientists have assumed that the sun is an enormous mass of hydrogen. But in a paper presented before the American Astronomical Society, Dr. Oliver Manuel, a professor of nuclear chemistry at UMR, says iron, not hydrogen, is the sun's most abundant element. Manuel claims that hydrogen fusion creates some of the sun's heat, as hydrogen -- the lightest of all elements -- moves to the sun's surface. But most of the heat comes from the core of an exploded supernova...

• Is Iron Causing All the Flares?

  11/19/2003 9:15:52 AM PST· by LibWhacker· 175 replies· 1,157+ views

  Universe Today | 11/18/03

  Dr. Oliver Manuel, a professor of nuclear chemistry, believes that iron, not hydrogen, is the sun's most abundant element. In a paper accepted for publication in the Journal of Fusion Energy, Manuel asserts that the 'standard solar model' -- which assumes that the sun's core is made of hydrogen -- has led to misunderstandings of how such solar flares occur, as well as inaccurate views on the nature of global climate change. Recent solar flares erupting on the sun's surface have unleashed powerful geomagnetic storms -- gigantic clouds of highly charged particles that pose a threat to electric utilities, high-frequency...

• Magnetic Stars

  10/15/2004 8:29:46 AM PDT· by ckilmer· 8 replies· 525+ views

  eurekalert/Nature/Max-Planck-Gesellschaft | October 14th, 2004 | J. Braithwaite and H.C. Spruit

  Magnetic Stars The puzzle of `magnetic stars' solved by astrophysicists of the Max Planck Society How does one explain the enormous magnetic field strengths of the so-called `magnetic stars'? This question concerning magnetic fields in the cosmos, first posed half a century ago, has now been answered by scientists of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching. With 3-dimensional numerical simulations they have found the magnetic field configurations that underly the strong magnetic fields observed on the surface of the so-called magnetic A-stars and magnetic White Dwarfs, and how these fields can survive for the life time of these...

• Scientific maverick's theory on Earth's core up for a test

  12/05/2004 11:17:28 AM PST· by SunkenCiv· 80 replies· 2,526+ views

  SF Chronicle | Monday, November 29, 2004 | Keay Davidson

  Researchers are preparing to test the highly controversial theory of a San Diego scientist, J. Marvin Herndon, who thinks a huge, natural nuclear reactor or "georeactor" -- a vast deposit of uranium several miles wide -- exists at Earth's core, thousands of miles beneath our feet... [I]t might help to explain otherwise puzzling phenomena of planetary science, such as fluctuations in the intensity of Earth's magnetic field... If Herndon's theoretical nuclear reactor really exists, then it should be gushing out antineutrinos that would fly through the roughly 4,000 miles of solid rock and emerge at the Earth's surface.

• Biggest stars produce strongest magnets

  01/30/2005 1:17:24 PM PST· by Willie Green· 14 replies· 1,000+ views

  SpaceFlightNow | January 28, 2005 | HARVARD-SMITHSONIAN CENTER FOR ASTROPHYSICS

  For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. Astronomy is a science of extremes -- the biggest, the hottest, and the most massive. Today, astrophysicist Bryan Gaensler (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) and colleagues announced that they have linked two of astronomy's extremes, showing that some of the biggest stars in the cosmos become the strongest magnets when they die. "The source of these very powerful magnetic objects has been a mystery since the first one was discovered in 1998. Now, we think we have solved that mystery," says Gaensler. The astronomers base their conclusions on data taken with CSIRO's...

• The Surface Of The Sun

  08/29/2008 12:19:10 PM PDT· by valkyry1· 26 replies· 278+ views

  The Surface of the Sun | copyright 2008

  The composition and mechanical inner workings of the sun beneath the visible photosphere have remained an enigma for thousands of years. There are a whole host of unexplained phenomena related to the sun's activities that still baffle gas model theorists to this day because they fail to recognize the existence of an iron alloy transitional layer that rests beneath the visible photosphere. Fortunately a host of new satellites and the

• Theory of the sun's role in formation of the solar system questioned

  09/09/2008 12:35:14 AM PDT· by SunkenCiv· 18 replies· 145+ views

  FirstScience | Thursday, September 4, 2008 | University of California -- San Diego

  A strange mix of oxygen found in a stony meteorite that exploded over Pueblito de Allende, Mexico nearly 40 years ago has puzzled scientists ever since. Small flecks of minerals lodged in the stone and thought to date from the beginning of the solar system have a pattern of oxygen types, or isotopes, that differs from those found in all known planetary rocks, including those from Earth, its Moon and meteorites from Mars. Now scientists from UC San Diego and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have eliminated one model proposed to explain the anomaly: the idea that light from the early...

• To Find New Planets, Look for the Lithium? [headline wrong -- s/b look for low lithium levels]

  11/15/2009 6:15:09 PM PST· by SunkenCiv· 17 replies· 1,136+ views

  National Geographic News | November 11, 2009 | John Roach

  Sunlike stars that harbor planets are low on lithium, according to a recent study that may offer a new tool in the hunt for planets beyond our solar system. Stars are made almost entirely of hydrogen and helium. A small percentage of a star's mass comes from heavier elements, which astronomers refer to as metals. Young, yellow stars like our sun usually have more metals than older, redder stars, although the exact mix of those metals can vary. But astronomers have been unable to explain why otherwise similar sunlike stars have widely different lithium levels.The new study suggests that the...

• Eclipses yield first images of elusive iron line in the solar corona

  01/04/2010 1:59:59 PM PST· by decimon· 9 replies· 531+ views

  NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center | Jan 4, 2009 | Unknown

  GREENBELT, Md. -- Solar physicists attempting to unlock the mysteries of the solar corona have found another piece of the puzzle by observing the sun's outer atmosphere during eclipses. Ground-based observations reveal the first images of the solar corona in the near-infrared emission line of highly ionized iron, or Fe XI 789.2 nm. The observations were taken during total solar eclipses in 2006, 2008, and 2009 by astrophysicist Adrian Daw of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., with an international team of scientists led by Shadia Habbal from the University of Hawaii's Institute for Astronomy (IfA). "The first...

• Study Peels Back More of the Magnetic Sun

  03/12/2010 11:45:54 PM PST· by neverdem· 12 replies· 730+ views

  ScienceNOW | March 12, 2010 | Phil Berardelli

  Enlarge Image Turmoil. Magnetism produces much of the sun's surface phenomena, such as these sunspots, seen in ultraviolet light. Credit: NASA/TRACE Researchers have discovered that one of the mysterious forces that sweep the sun's surface shows an unexpectedly strong connection with the number of sunspots, magnetic disturbances that can affect Earth's weather and telecommunications. The findings should improve predictions of the sun's dynamics and might even help scientists develop better climate models. Along with heat and light, the sun emits x-rays and magnetically charged particles that can endanger astronauts, fry circuits aboard satellites orbiting Earth, and overload electric power...

• Really Hot Doin's Discovered on the Sun

  01/10/2011 4:23:39 PM PST· by neverdem· 14 replies· 1+ views

  ScienceNOW | 6 January 2011 | Richard A. Kerr

  Enlarge Image In the eye of the beholder. Sharper views of the sun at a variety of wavelengths are revealing small jets from the solar surface that are helping heat the overlying corona to 1 million°C. Credit: Bart De Pontieu The mystery of the solar corona is obvious enough. The vanishingly thin atmosphere of the sun -- the wispy stuff that can be glimpsed faintly during total solar eclipses -- simmers at 1 million°C -- 200 times hotter than the "fire" beneath it. What gives? Researchers now believe they have caught the sun in the act of heating bits of itself to coronal temperatures...

• Evolved stars locked in fatalistic dance

  07/14/2011 6:00:53 AM PDT· by LibWhacker· 20 replies

  PhysOrg | 7/13/11

  White dwarfs are the burned-out cores of stars like our Sun. Astronomers have discovered a pair of white dwarfs spiraling into one another at breakneck speeds. Today, these white dwarfs are so near they make a complete orbit in just 13 minutes, but they are gradually slipping closer together. About 900,000 years from now -- a blink of an eye in astronomical time -- they will merge and possibly explode as a supernova. By watching the stars converge, scientists will test both Einstein's theory of general relativity and the origin of some peculiar supernovae.The two white dwarfs are circling...

• Solar Flare Activity Prompting NASA to Convene a News Briefing Thursday in Washington

  08/18/2011 2:58:28 AM PDT· by SunkenCiv· 17 replies

  My Weather Tech dot com | August 17, 2011 | Kyle Shilt on. Filed under SPACE.

  Increasing solar activity and the threat that coronal mass ejections (CME) pose to Earth has prompted NASA to convene a news briefing at its Headquarter building in Washington on Thursday afternoon. Thursday's briefing has been arranged, space agency officials say, in light of new information coming from NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO), spacecraft and other NASA probes. The briefing will feature new details about the structure of solar storms and the impact they have on Earth... A massive solar flare, the largest recorded in four years, occurred last Tuesday prompting fears the blast could result in some disruption to...

• Astronomy Picture of the Day -- SDSS J102915+172927: A Star That Should Not Exist

  09/07/2011 1:17:20 AM PDT· by SunkenCiv· 37 replies

  NASA | September 07, 2011 | (see photo credit)

  Explanation: Why does this star have so few heavy elements? Stars born in the generation of our Sun have an expected abundance of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium mixed into their atmospheres. Stars born in the generation before our Sun, Population II stars, the stars that created most of the heavy elements around us today, are seen to have some, although less, elements heavier than H and He. Furthermore, even the elusive never-seen first stars in the universe, so-called Population III stars, are predicted to have a large mass and a small but set amount of heavy elements. Yet...

• Messenger from Mercury: Orbiter returns images of odd landforms on innermost planet

  11/26/2011 6:03:38 PM PST· by SunkenCiv· 18 replies

  Science News | November 19th, 2011 | Nadia Drake

  Hot and heavy little Mercury is warming up to NASA's MESSENGER probe and revealing its true planetary colors -- in enhanced-color images. Among the spacecraft's finds are bizarre landforms (shown here in blue) tucked inside impact craters on the planet's surface. David Blewett of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory and his colleagues report these puzzling scarlike hollows in the Sept. 30 Science, which features seven papers describing the compact world. The pits resemble sunken Swiss cheese holes -- smooth, rimless depressions that vary in size between several meters and a few kilometers across. Irregularly shaped, the clustered hollows...

• Pole flips tied to plate tectonics

  11/26/2011 8:27:27 PM PST· by SunkenCiv· 37 replies

  Science News | November 19th, 2011 | Alexandra Witze

  Assumed to be caused by random fluctuations in the circulation of the molten iron core, the flips may actually be tied to what's going on at Earth's surface. At times in the geologic past when landmasses have bunched together on one side of the equator, the Earth's magnetic field has begun flipping soon thereafter... "What we see clearly is that the surface positions of the continents are linked with the frequency of the reversals," says group member François Pétrélis, a geophysicist at the French research agency CNRS in Paris... Computer simulations have shown how molten iron in the spinning core...

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks neverdem.

---

· String Theory Ping List ·

---

---

· Join · Bookmark · Topics · Google ·
· View or Post in 'blog · post a topic · subscribe ·

---

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks neverdem.

---

join or quit view topics view or post blog bookmark post new topic subscribe

---

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks neverdem.

---

· String Theory Ping List ·

---

---

· Join · Bookmark · Topics · Google ·
· View or Post in 'blog · post a topic · subscribe ·

---

[colinhester]

Great references. Dr. Manuel was dept chair and on my committee when I went to UMR. He was quite a character.

[mylife]

I am getting 40 meter shortwave like gang busters in the AM and 30 meter is booming at night

[BenLurkin]

[Condor51]

*** I am getting 40 meter shortwave like gang busters in the AM and 30 meter is booming at night ***

Not that I know what it means [gotta be Ham Radio stuff, right :-)]But there's been a a lot of 'static' (squelch) over the Chi PD Radio Frequencies for a while now. More than should be normal. However per SpaceWeather.com there shouldn't be any of this new 'static' as there's no solar flares or sunspot activity and the solar wind is normal.

There's nothing in space to cause this 'static' on the CPD Radio Bands. Yet it's there?? Previously when no cops were talking 'the carrier wave' was silent, no squelch. (think I phrased that correctly?). And now, even when the Cops are talking there's some 'noise'. At times, it's 100% unlistenable.

Don't have a receiver, SW Radio, I listen online.

[LibWhacker]

The old mystery seems to be on the verge of unraveling.
And once again, nature may be showing us the way: If a 6000°C plasma and some, as yet, not fully understood magnetic process can drive temperatures up to several million degrees, you’ve got to sit up and take notice. A complete understanding could, conceivably, point the way to controlled fusion.

[Delta 21]

Good Lord ! Thats HOT !

[Starstruck]

It’s hotter in my attic than in my basement.

[SunkenCiv]

He has an energetic vibe I think, but of course, there were some allegations about his private life.

[Yollopoliuhqui]

Scientists need to recall that iron loses its magnetism abot 770 degrees C. The extreme heat of the corona will not be explained by “magnetic reconnection”, a phenomena that has not been repeated in the laboratory and remains the theoretical result of mathematical modeling, not reality. Astronomers will one day come to the correct conclusion that the sun is electrical in nature, a ball of plasma powered by the galactic Birkland Currents which comprise the spiral arms. 99% of all matter in the universe is in the plasma state and where you have plasma you have electricity and when you have electricity, you have magnetism.

Birkland Currents pinch and self-organize due to the magnetism they create. At high current levels, they Z-pinch into nodes and that is where star formation actually occurs. Planetary disk accretion cannot account for the hundreds of anomalies in the Solar System that are swept under the rug, whereas the electrical model can account for those anomalies.

www.thunderbolts.info

[ConservativeMind]

Unfortunately, he was virtually laughed off of Phys.org by commenters who thought he was wacky. They didn’t believe NASA would have worked with him on anything.

He has (or had) a web site with his research on it that was interesting.

[TheOldLady]

"...4 million°C... blistering temperature."

Blistering? That may be an understatement. ;-)

[SunkenCiv]

PABA 40 million.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Yollopoliuhqui.