☀️ Could tiny whirlpools on the Sun heat its corona?
A new study argues that millions of small plasma vortices on the Sun's surface carry enough energy to explain why its outer atmosphere is so hot.
The mystery
Strangely, the Sun's thin outer atmosphere, the corona, is far hotter than the visible surface below it, even though it sits farther from the heat source. Where does all that extra energy come from?
The answer
This year, Hawaii's giant Inouye solar telescope photographed plasma whirlpools only a few dozen kilometres wide on the Sun's surface. Physicist Katariina Nykyri of Embry-Riddle calculated the energy in these vortices (about 2 septillion ergs each) and noted that millions of them form and fade every few minutes. As they spin, they squeeze magnetic field lines until the lines snap and reconnect, releasing heat and fast jets of plasma. Her paper in The Astrophysical Journal Letters suggests this could power the corona.
Now think about this
If countless small whirlpools can heat the corona, could the same hidden engine be warming the atmospheres of other stars?
