Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

The Secret of the Sun's Heated Atmosphere

Posted by kdawson on from the ooh-shiny dept.

eldavojohn writes "There has long been speculation on why the Sun's surface is a mere ten thousand degrees while the atmosphere can reach millions. Space.com is reporting that the mystery has now been solved. Researchers looked for Alfven waves in the solar chromosphere and found them. Followup studies employing simulations demonstrated that the energetics work out to transfer energy from the Sun's surface to its overlying corona.. The magnetic waves may also be the power source behind the solar wind."

6 of 158 comments (clear)

  1. Did anybody else think... by tekiegreg · · Score: 3, Funny

    When I saw that article, I couldn't help but think "Damn that's a hot data center, glad I'm not running any of their servers :-) " then again if someone were truly able to get a computer running at that temperature, maybe they're worth considering...

    --
    ...in bed
    1. Re:Did anybody else think... by SleptThroughClass · · Score: 5, Funny

      Imagine a Milky Way cluster of these...

  2. Ah... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...but does it run solaris?

  3. Re:Alfven is turning in his grave! by CheshireCatCO · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The waves are called "Alfven waves", with good reason. The fact that this then results in his name being attached to the theory is amusing, perhaps ironic, and arguably unfortunate, but hardly criminal. Shit happens when names are attached to things in math and science, it's something one has to just get used to.

    (The name name "big bang" was meant be disparaging, and yet here we are. Look up "Fuchsian groups" sometime, too.)

    And while you're at it, give astrophysicists a little credit. We do know physics, including E&M, pretty damn well. What's you're qualification to arm-chair quarterback on this?

  4. Joseph Preistley is turning in his grave! by u8i9o0 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm not familiar with Alfven, but I offer the following:

    Joseph Preistley is credited with discovering oxygen.
    That's a wonderful honor and all except his opinion was that air gets clogged with "phlogiston" when material is burned, such that a fire within an enclosed environment gets extinguished because the air can no longer absorb this stuff.
    Nowadays, chemists understand that free oxygen gets depleted during a fire - which is the EXACT OPPOSITE of Preistley's strongly held belief.

    What can I say, "misplaced honor happens".

    --
    This is not my sig
  5. Alfvén is smiling in his grave! by APODNereid · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Are astrophysicists just unaware, or are they being malicious? Neither.

    They have spent a decade or three researching magnetic reconnection - in the lab, via in situ space probes, and by remote sensing (a.k.a. using telescopes) - and have developed descriptions of the behaviours of plasmas, building on Alfvén's work and these discoveries, that match the observed phenomena nicely.

    Take a look at the Magnetic Reconnection Experiment (http://mrx.pppl.gov/), as an example of lab-based plasma physics work on magnetic reconnection.

    But maybe you know something about the behaviour of plasmas that the thousands of researchers - experimentalists, theorists, 'observers', and those who simulate plasmas in computers - don't, or have missed?

    Why not write a paper to Nature, or Science, giving chapter and verse of the holes in their work?