From Columbia University
Astronomers find clues to decades-long coronal heating mystery
Drs. Michael Hahn and Daniel Wolf Savin, research scientists at Columbia University’s Astrophysics Laboratory in New York, NY, found evidence that magnetic waves in a polar coronal hole contain enough energy to heat the corona and moreover that they also deposit most of their energy at sufficiently low heights for the heat to spread throughout the corona. The observations help to answer a 70-year-old solar physics conundrum about the unexplained extreme temperature of the Sun’s corona – known as the coronal heating problem.
Hahn and Savin analyzed data from the Extreme Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrometer onboard the Japanese satellite Hinode. They used observations of a polar coronal hole, a region of the Sun where the magnetic fields lines stretch from the solar surface far into interplanetary space. The findings were published on September 30th in the October 20th edition of The Astrophysical Journal.
To understand the coronal heating problem, imagine a flame coming out of an ice cube.
A similar effect occurs on the surface of the Sun. Nuclear fusion in the center of the Sun heats the solar core to 15 million degrees. Moving away from this furnace, by the time one arrives at the surface of the Sun the gas has cooled to a relatively refreshing 6000 degrees. But the temperature of the gas in the corona, above the solar surface, soars back up to over one million degrees. What causes this unexpected temperature increase has puzzled scientists since 1939.
Two dominant theories exist to explain this mystery. One attributes the heating to the loops of magnetic field which stretch across the solar surface and can snap and release energy. Another ascribes the heating to waves emanating from below the solar surface, which carry magnetic energy and deposit it in the corona. Observations show both of these processes continually occur on the Sun. But until now scientists have been unable to determine if either one of these mechanisms releases sufficient energy to heat the corona to such high temperatures.
Hahn and Savin’s recent observations show that magnetic waves are the answer. The advance opens up a realm of further questions; chief among them is what causes the waves to damp. Hahn and Savin are planning new observations to try to address this issue.
This research has been supported by the National Science Foundation Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences through the Solar, Heliospheric and Interplanetary Environment program.
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A third theory is Low Energy Nuclear Reactions. Now to see which fits best.
Nice to see some humor in a science press release:
Interesting, do the fluctuations in magnetic field strength, cause similar effects on earth?
Great post! You’d never read about something like this on Real Climate!
I’m waiting for Dr. Svalgaard to contribute…Leif?
John Robertson: An excellent question about magnetic fluctuations having a possible impact on the earth.
Does the “over one million degrees” corona (sun’s atmosphere) heat the surface of the 6000 degree surface?
Low Energy Nuclear Reactions is a theory that’s a stretch, I have never seen anything that remotely passes as a theory just a bunch of wild ideas that pretty much violate most of known physics. Little green alien men and some unseen anti-gravity or anti-matter are equally solid theories as LENR so we better check them for match as well.
Pfft… A million degrees in the corona? Everybody knows that the interior of the Earth is millions of degrees.
I guess the mechanism would be similar to an induction stove? And if it can heat suns atmosphere to a million degrees maybe it’s variation in intensity can change earths atmosphere by a degree or so too? Why not?
What? A scientific study of warming based on observation, and not computer models,this is unheard of when it comes to the Earth.
Is a commuter model something that somebody conjectures while stuck in traffic?
[Typo fixed ~mod.]
A propos of magnetic effects, I’ve understood various commentators to be saying that the Earth’s magnetic field is weakening.
Can someone who has studied the subject explain to me the likely impact of this phenomenon upon atmospheric temperatures?
It might be negligible, or it might be a (reasonably significant) heating effect, say by permitting the energy of charged particles to be deposited deeper into the atmosphere, or cooling, say by promoting aerosols, or by reducing the energy previously produced by accelerating charged particles through the earth’s magnetic fields, or of course, by other physical effects I haven’t considered.
But I’d love to know the answer.
mkelly says:
October 16, 2013 at 8:06 am
Does the “over one million degrees” corona (sun’s atmosphere) heat the surface of the 6000 degree surface?
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Only if it supports the narrative.
40 years ago there was a school of thought that the energy needed to heat the Corona came from the dissipation of accoustic waves. The idea was that turbulent motions due to the convection of the outer layers (as seen in the granulation) made the out layers an extremely noisy place (should there be someone or something to hear it). The density of the Corona drops off quite rapidly with altitude and the non-linear dissipation of those sound waves was thought to dump enough energy to heat it to a million degrees. The competing idea was that it were Alfven (magneto-accoustic) waves doing the job. It seems that the mechanism based on magnetic waves is more likely.
SOLOR in the title. Really?
[typo fixed, suspect it is some voice recognition issue – used to type some posts – mod]
Leo Morgan says:
October 16, 2013 at 8:33 am
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Not to worry. The weakening of the terrestrial magnetic field, like the lengthening of the day and the movement of continents, happens on geologic time scales.
The earth’s exosphere also gets very hot (around 1500 K). I always assumed this will happen wherever a planet’s upper atmosphere gets so thin that molecular collisions are very rare, allowing individual, gravitationally bound, gas molecules to acquire considerable energy from being struck by a large number of solar UV photons between collisions. The temperature equilibrium achieved would be determined by photon flux, gravity, and the escape velocity of the gas molecule species. If my assumptions are incorrect, what is the current explanation of the temperature of our exosphere and why isn’t the same mechanism responsible for heating the sun’s corona?
They are finally on to the true nature of fusion reactions. The reason for the high temperature is the generation of new protons via a process similar to the Casimir effect, but which occurs with protons instead of electrons. Magnetic waves are the same thing as space waves. It is the ripple of space-time, itself, that places protons in the correct position to generate new protons from the “vacuum.” The process that occurs at the center of the Sun is not fusion, but rather the decay of a neutron core as adequately explained by Oliver Manuel. Given enough time, they will eventually get this right.
LdB says: Low Energy Nuclear Reactions is a theory that’s a stretch, I have never seen anything that remotely passes as a theory just a bunch of wild ideas that pretty much violate most of known physics.
Interesting observation. Could the existence of observed LENRs be evidence that most of known physics is wrong?
Naah! This is all wrong. Must be where the “missing” heat is going.
The sun’s corona was explained by Langmuir in the middle of the 20th century. The plasma around the sun has a pinched galactic current running thru it, which makes it hot. But then just as now the dogma amongst astronomers was that electricity doesn’t exist in space so Langmuir’s explanation was ignored. After plasma cosmologist Alfven won the physics nobel prize and said electromagnetism was at heart of cosmology ( he drew out the galactic electric circuit and the sun’s electric circuit ) the astronomy community strangely accepted half of what he said by accepting that magnetic fields shape the cosmos, but they still refused to consider electricity in space. Why? They had just been brainwashed by Chapman for 20 years who insisted absolutely no electromagnetism in space.
Today the acolytes of Chapman are still in the seats of power in the astronomy community and they still use Chapman’s old simple dismissive argument to ignore electricity in space. ” Any separate charges in free space would have nothing to resist electrostatic attraction so would come together rapidly and neutralize each other. Thus practically all of cosmology is electrically neutral “.
Leif has used this argument in response to me.
So today we have a sun with a magnetic field changing powerfully enough to create 2 million K temperatures, but no electric current of consequence.
Here’s a pertinent point. Search Stellar magnetic field using wiki. You get a stellar magnetic field page. Now try stellar electric field. There isn’t a wiki page for that. Eh? How can there not be a page? NASA have spent billions and more than half a century directly investigating the stellar magnetic field ( centuries if you count sunspots ) . So how come by contrast the astro-community hasn’t so much as amassed a single page of info on the stellar electric field? Even if its just to say, we searched, this is how we searched, and we didn’t find one.
There can be no rational reason !
The truth is astronomers are forbidden by their dogma to investigate the sun’s electric field. The sun’s electric field is assumed to be zero! It’s a relic\shrine of the Chapmanian ideal of no electricity in space.
Crazy.
The Earth has an electric field of 1,000,000 volts per 10km , but the sun is assumed to have an electric field of zero and astronomers won’t even check this assumption?
As the cracks in this insane assumption have widened due to modern solar observation instruments, solar observers will admit there’s localized temporal electric fields here and there on the sun, but none of much lasting consequence, and they are spose to all be products of changing magnetic fields. It’s a very wrong way to interpret what is seen.
Interesting what ” sun’s electric field ” google search returns.
– A physics forum question where an admin educated in conventional astronomy replies that the sun’s electric field is zero.
– some electric universe pages
– some conventional papers from the early-mid 20th century.
– conventional pages on the sun’s magnetic field
where’s the modern conventional study of the sun electric field? There isn’t any!
“…found evidence that magnetic waves in a polar coronal hole contain enough energy to heat the corona…”
Waves, as in varying amplitude? Does the coronal temperature vary, as in “sinusoidally”?
Or, are they just using “waves” in reference to a standing magnetic field?
LbD et al.
For the LENR solar corona theory, see:
Srivastava, Y.N., Windom, A., & Larsen, L., “A primer for electro-weak induced low energy nuclear reactions” (2008). Physics Faculty Publications. Paper 11. http://hdl.handle.net/2047/d20000364
See presentations by Srivastava on LENR
NewEnergyTime.com is compiling papers and presentations to/against LENR.
See Windom Larsen theory
Defkalion and others are presenting experiments purporting to show substantial excess energy from excited nickel and hydrogen.
Gordon Docherty gives one example of LENR-101
I see Physics in ferment with potential for net energy systems.
Lewis Larsen’s LENR summary
Defkalion is observing magnetic fields around LENR. So LENR/magnetic solar corona impacts could be interelated.
What a pity that Climate “Science” isn’t as open and above board as real science, such as Astro-physics!