THERE is an outer layer of the Sun only visible during a total solar eclipse – and for a long time its physical properties have puzzled scientists.
Finally, researchers are inching toward an answer as to why the Sun is hotter on its outermost layer than it is on the surface.
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Nasa’s Parker Probe embarked on a journey to the Sun in 2018.
During the journey, the probe used Venus’ gravity to propel itself closer and closer to the sun with each passing revolution.
On the latest roundabout, the Parker Probe came within almost 5million miles of the surface of the Sun – the closest distance a probe has ever attained by a considerable margin.
The probe dipped in and out of the coronal layer, which can get up to 100 times hotter than the surface of our star.
The probe relayed data about the observed segment of the coronal layer back to Earth-bound scientists – though it took a few months for the information to travel 93million space miles.
Meanwhile, a team of researchers in New Zealand studying the Sun’s corona racked with two theories on why the outer layer is considerably hotter than the surface.
It’s an illogical premise – how could the layer that borders the freezing expanse of space be hotter than the portion than the surface?
The two theories, one based on energy transfer and the other on magnetic waves, did not do enough to explain how the corona could reach 2,000,000 degrees Fahrenheit as individual trains of thought.
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“What is nice about our result is that it links together two previous theories that had each been very well studied,” Jonathan Squire, an astrophysicist that published a study on the coronal layer, told CNET.
Squire and his team ran a six-dimensional simulation that borrows from both theories, “while simultaneously explaining various other long-standing observational puzzles.”
There is still more to be learned about the Sun’s corona and how it behaves.
The more we garner about the Sun’s outermost layer from the Parker Probe, probes that will follow it and studies led by astrophysicists like Squire, the more accurately we will be able to predict cosmic weather and solar violence.
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