#Sun corona tangled free
What happens then? The plasma in the corona is free to move around, and the tangled magnetic field will cause electric currents and flows of plasma. Suppose that our coronal magnetic field has been tangled by motions in the solar interior, in the manner described. This tangling has important consequences, as we shall see. As a result, the coronal magnetic field can become braided and tangled. The footpoints of these field lines, where they penetrate the surface, are dragged around by the random, turbulent motions inside the Sun. The magnetic field lines in the Sun's corona (the atmosphere above its visible surface) are rooted inside the Sun. (See also the TRACE movie, looking down on the solar surface.) The inset shows how the coronal field lines are braided by random motions on the solar surface. It is.įigure 2: Magnetic loops in the solar corona, taken by the TRACE satellite. But electric currents generate their own magnetic fields, so we might expect the solar magnetic field to be complex and ever-changing. The Sun is not a solid but a churning ball of plasma - a gas so hot that its atoms have been stripped of their electrons which are then able to conduct electricity. At first glance, the Sun's magnetic field has north and south poles akin to an astrophysical bar magnet, but take a closer look and it is rather different. Here, the iron filings are replaced by electrons which emit the light, but the effect is the same. Magnetic field lines: are they not those orderly patterns mapped out by iron filings around bar magnet, revealing the direction of an invisible force field? On a much larger scale, the Sun's magnetic field is also revealed in beautiful images, such as those taken in visible light during total eclipses. In this article I will outline how the notion of magnetic topology helps us to understand the physical situation and draw such conclusions. This enables the storage of vast quantities of energy. What happens when magnetic fields get tangled up in knots? This does happen in the Sun's atmosphere and mathematical models predict that once the magnetic field becomes tangled, it must retain some vestige of this complexity for a long time. (Image on the right by Miloslav Druckmüller.) The global solar corona on the right was seen from Earth during a 2008 total eclipse. The Hinode mission is a joint project of the US, European and Japanese space agencies and the UK's Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council.Figure 1: Magnetic fields, from a bar magnet to the Sun. " in an extremely dynamic chromosphere or gaseous envelope around the Sun." "Hinode images are revealing irrefutable evidence for the presence of turbulence-driven processes that are bringing magnetic fields, on all scales, to the Sun's surface," says Dr Alan Title, a physicist at Lockheed Martin and Stanford University. They hope the observations can help explain and perhaps predict space weather, the solar ejections that can disable satellites, knock out electricity grids on Earth and cause the spectacular auroras in extreme northern and southern skies.
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This is the outer layer of the Sun that mystifies scientists in part because it is 100 times hotter than the star's actual surface. The X-Ray Telescope, or XRT, collects x-rays emitted from the Sun's corona. "Everything we thought we knew about x-ray images of the Sun is out of date." "It's going to put us in a whole new realm of understanding," Golub says.
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The scientists say they are surprised and delighted by the findings. "These images will open a new era of study on some of the Sun's processes that affect Earth, astronauts, orbiting satellites and the solar system."
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"For the first time, we are now able to make out tiny granules of hot gas that rise and fall in the Sun's magnetised atmosphere," says Dr Dick Fisher, director of NASA's Heliophysics Division. The spacecraft, named Hinode after the Japanese word for sunrise, was launched in September with an array of instruments, each looking at a different layer of the Sun. "With the X-Ray Telescope, we can see them clearly for the first time." "Theorists suggested that twisted, tangled magnetic fields might exist," says Dr Leon Golub, senior astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. This process releases energy and may power solar storms and coronal mass ejections, which in turn affect the Earth.Ī turbulent magnetic field would, in theory, generate more energy than a steady-state field. The images show twisting plumes of gas rising from the Sun's corona and reacting with the star's magnetic field. X-ray images taken from a new international spacecraft show that the Sun's magnetic field is much more turbulent than scientists think, the US space agency reports.
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