Friday, December 07, 2007

Our star in pictures
The Japanese Hinode satellite has discovered a type of magnetic wave that ripples through the plasma of the sun’s atmosphere or “corona”. The waves may heat the corona to extreme temperatures by releasing energy as they travel outward from the sun along magnetic field lines. This could help explain the “corona problem” - the fact that the sun’s surface is only about 6,000 kelvin while the corona is at least 1 million kelvin

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