Burning Mystery of the Sun's Plasma Jets May Finally Be Solved

[Judi Lynn]

By Charles Q. Choi, Space.com Contributor | June 22, 2017 02:08pm ET


The mystery of how jets of plasma explode from the surface of the sun and erupt into space thousands of times a day may finally be solved, a new study finds.

This discovery could help solve the long-standing mystery of why the outer reaches of the sun's atmosphere are so much hotter than the surface of the sun, the authors of the new study said. Solar scientists have described this counterintuitive phenomenon as akin to the air around a bonfire having a higher temperature than the fire itself.

For more than a century, astronomers have detected super-hot jets of plasma (clouds of electrically charged particles) called spicules permeating the lower solar atmosphere right above the surface of the sun, like giant pillars of fire popping up briefly on a flaming lawn. Thousands of spicules up to hundreds of miles wide erupt daily, hurling plasma outward at speeds of up to about 335,500 mph (540,000 km/h). "These jets of plasma are all over the sun," said study lead author Juan Martínez-Sykora, an astrophysicist at the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute in Petaluma, California. [How Hot Is the Sun?]

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