Their discovery has revealed the existence of a new breed of solar waves, called the Alfven wave, known to transport energy into the corona.
Posted on 03/21/2009 7:52:51 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
LONDON: Scientists have detected vast turbulent waves in the sun's lower atmosphere that at a time spew the energy equivalent of 10 billion nuclear warheads.
Queen's University Belfast (QUB) scientists with researchers from the Universities of Sheffield and California State, have shed some light on why the corona, the region around the sun, has a much higher temperature than its surface - something of a puzzle to scientists.
Their discovery has revealed the existence of a new breed of solar waves, called the Alfven wave, known to transport energy into the corona.
The surface of the sun, known as the photosphere, can reach temperatures of 5,000 degrees Celsius. But the corona has been shown to reach temperatures of over a million degrees Celsius.
The waves have been named after Hannes Alfven who in 1942 received a Nobel Prize for his work in the area.
He theorised the existence of these waves but no hard evidence ever surfaced, until recently, when Mihalis Mathioudakis, a professor and David Jess, both of QUB, made the discovery using the Swedish Solar Telescope in the Canary Islands.
Mathioudakis, leader of the Queen's University Solar Group, said "The solar corona, visible from earth only during a total solar
eclipse, is a very dynamic environment which can erupt suddenly, releasing more energy than 10 billion atomic bombs.
"Our study makes a major advancement in the understanding of how the million-degree corona manages to achieve this feat."
David Jess, from QUB and lead author of the paper said: "Often, waves can be visualised by the rippling of water when a stone is dropped into a pond, or by the motions of a guitar string when plucked," according to a QUB release.
"Alfven waves though cannot be seen so easily. In fact, they are completely invisible to the naked eye. Only by examining the motions of structures and their corresponding velocities in the Sun's turbulent atmosphere could we find, for the first time, the presence of these elusive Alfven waves."
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Hotter than the sun - Researchers directly observe Alfvén waves, which keep the corona sizzling
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| Definition: | Electromagnetic waves that are propagated along lines of magnetic force in a plasma. Alfen waves, named after plasma physicist and Nobel Prize winner Hannes Alfen, have frequencies significantly less than the ion cyclotron frequency, and are characterized by the fact that the magnetic field lines oscillate with the plasma. |
Sun's Magnetic Secret Revealed
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By Jeremy Hsu Powerful magnetic waves have been confirmed for the first time as major players in the process that makes the sun's atmosphere strangely hundreds of times hotter than its already superhot surface. The magnetic waves — called Alfven waves — can carry enough energy from the sun's active surface to heat its atmosphere, or corona. "The surface and corona are chock full of these things, and they're very energetic," said Bart de Pontieu, a physicist at the Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory in California. The sun contains powerful heating and magnetic forces which drive the temperature to tens of thousands of degrees at the surface — yet the quieter corona wreathing the sun reaches temperatures of millions of degrees. Scientists have speculated that Alfven waves act as energy conveyor belts to heat the sun's atmosphere, but lacked the observational evidence to prove their theories.
Staff Writer
posted: 22 January 2008
06:04 am ET
“releasing more energy than 10 billion atomic bombs.”
Haden’t realised that “atomic bomb” was a measure of energy. How many BTUs is it?
Algore is on his way to fix this misbehaving Sun, and, and this Alfven will be prosecuted by the greeny environazi scientwists pouliiice.
See this amazing image:
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"atomic bomb" is a unit of energy known only to journalists.
Good pick, and great work by the scientists involved.
But my point was, there are no numbers.
Still no spots.
Cheers!
I think I’ll ask the administration for a grant to build a rocket to go to the sun to get some of that energy and bring it back! Talk about alternative energy! ;)
If they has said atomic farts, I could pretty well quantify that.
;)
Well, you can figure out the potential energy in an atomic bomb, which is converted to heat and sound and EM energy during detonation. So there is a number. It’s different for every bomb, but it’s based on mass.
Temperature is a measure of the kinetic energy of molecules, so the idea that there is something driving these temperatures so high isn’t that inconceivable. Yes the writing is poor, but so is all science writing. Par for the course.
Let’s have NASA send AlGore up there to bring back all of the energy he can get! Once again, folks, AlGore can single handedly solve the energy crisis and Global Warming!
“It’s different for every bomb, but it’s based on mass.”
Well, not really.
Do you get paid to split hairs? Two bombs, of the same size, that come of the assembly line consecutively will have “the same yield” but there are always minor variations and manufacturing tolerances.
Yes, actually, I do get paid to split hairs. And atoms.
Mass of what?
;)
About 1200 hogsheads of mead worth...
Traveling at an unspecified number of furlongs per fortnight?
Sunspot Activity at 8,000-Year High
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SPACE.com ^ | 27 October 2004 | Robert Roy Britt
Posted on Sat 17 Dec 2005 07:32:32 AM PST by Lonesome in MassachussetsEdited on Sat 17 Dec 2005 08:31:35 AM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
Sunspots have been more common in the past seven decades than at any time in the last 8,000 years, according to a new historic reconstruction of solar activity.
Many researchers have tried to link sunspot activity to climate change, but the new results cannot be used to explain global warming, according to the scientists who did the study.
Sunspots are areas of intense magnetic energy. They act like temporary caps on upwelling matter, and they are the sites of occasional ferocious eruptions of light and electrified gas. More sunspots generally means increased solar activity.
Sunspots have been studied directly for about four centuries, and these direct observations provide the most reliable historic record of solar activity. Previous studies have suggested cooler periods on Earth were related to long stretches with low sunspot counts. From the 1400s to the 1700s, for example, Europe and North America experienced a "Little Ice Age." For a period of about 50 years during that time, there were almost no sunspots.
But a firm connection between sunspot numbers and climate remains elusive, many scientists say.
Better record
The new study, led by Sami Solanki of the Max Planck Institute in Germany, employed a novel approach to pinning down sunspot activity going back 11,400 years:
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