From the National Science Foundation:
Answer lies in jets of plasma
One of the most enduring mysteries in solar physics is why the Sun’s outer atmosphere, or corona, is millions of degrees hotter than its surface.
Now scientists believe they have discovered a major source of hot gas that replenishes the corona: jets of plasma shooting up from just above the Sun’s surface.
The finding addresses a fundamental question in astrophysics: how energy is moved from the Sun’s interior to create its hot outer atmosphere.
“It’s always been quite a puzzle to figure out why the Sun’s atmosphere is hotter than its surface,” says Scott McIntosh, a solar physicist at the High Altitude Observatory of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo., who was involved in the study.
“By identifying that these jets insert heated plasma into the Sun’s outer atmosphere, we can gain a much greater understanding of that region and possibly improve our knowledge of the Sun’s subtle influence on the Earth’s upper atmosphere.”
The research, results of which are published this week in the journal Science, was conducted by scientists from Lockheed Martin’s Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory (LMSAL), NCAR, and the University of Oslo. It was supported by NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF), NCAR’s sponsor.
“These observations are a significant step in understanding observed temperatures in the solar corona,” says Rich Behnke of NSF’s Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences, which funded the research.
“They provide new insight about the energy output of the Sun and other stars. The results are also a great example of the power of collaboration among university, private industry and government scientists and organizations.”
The research team focused on jets of plasma known as spicules, which are fountains of plasma propelled upward from near the surface of the Sun into the outer atmosphere.
For decades scientists believed spicules could send heat into the corona. However, following observational research in the 1980s, it was found that spicule plasma did not reach coronal temperatures, and so the theory largely fell out of vogue.
“Heating of spicules to millions of degrees has never been directly observed, so their role in coronal heating had been dismissed as unlikely,” says Bart De Pontieu, the lead researcher and a solar physicist at LMSAL.
In 2007, De Pontieu, McIntosh, and their colleagues identified a new class of spicules that moved much faster and were shorter-lived than the traditional spicules.
These “Type II” spicules shoot upward at high speeds, often in excess of 100 kilometers per second, before disappearing.
The rapid disappearance of these jets suggested that the plasma they carried might get very hot, but direct observational evidence of this process was missing.
The researchers used new observations from the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly on NASA’s recently launched Solar Dynamics Observatory and NASA’s Focal Plane Package for the Solar Optical Telescope (SOT) on the Japanese Hinode satellite to test their hypothesis.
“The high spatial and temporal resolution of the newer instruments was crucial in revealing this previously hidden coronal mass supply,” says McIntosh.
“Our observations reveal, for the first time, the one-to-one connection between plasma that is heated to millions of degrees and the spicules that insert this plasma into the corona.”
The findings provide an observational challenge to the existing theories of coronal heating.
During the past few decades, scientists proposed a wide variety of theoretical models, but the lack of detailed observation significantly hampered progress.
“One of our biggest challenges is to understand what drives and heats the material in the spicules,” says De Pontieu.
A key step, according to De Pontieu, will be to better understand the interface region between the Sun’s visible surface, or photosphere, and its corona.
Another NASA mission, the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS), is scheduled for launch in 2012 to provide high-fidelity data on the complex processes and enormous contrasts of density, temperature and magnetic field between the photosphere and corona. Researchers hope this will reveal more about the spicule heating and launch mechanism.
The LMSAL is part of the Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company, which designs and develops, tests, manufactures and operates a full spectrum of advanced-technology systems for national security and military, civil government and commercial customers.
-NSF-
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Just a warning to anyone reading about the very local interstellar medium (VLISM) anything written before 2009 that does not take into account the solar wind charge exchange (SWCX) issue that has been skewing the site lines like for years and years and leading them to believe the surrounding VLISM is warm and ionized throughout, will mislead your perceptions. That solar wind charge exchange issue is now being delt with.
Time*variability in the Interstellar Boundary Conditions of the Heliosphere over the past 60,000 years:
Impact of the Solar Journey on the Galactic Cosmic Ray Flux at Earth
Frisch, Mueller
2010
..”””The sensitivity of the heliosphere configuration to the total interstellar pressure, including
the dynamic ram pressure and magnetic pressure (Holzer 1989) indicate that the global
heliosphere is a weather vane for the circumheliospheric ISM (CISM). Sufficient data
on interstellar absorption lines are now available that the general characteristics of
the circumheliosphere ISM can be reconstructed for the past ~ 100, 000 years (Section
2), providing a basis for evaluating the ISM-modified heliosphere (Section 3), and
comparing these historical variations with the geologic radio-isotope record (Section
4). Any scenario connecting features in the geomagnetic record with interstellar cloud
encounters will necessarily include assumptions about the ISM, as well as an incomplete
understanding of galactic cosmic ray (GCR) modulation for variable heliosphere
configurations. Our conclusions below linking cloud transitions to discontinuities in the
geologic radioisotope record are subject to these uncertainties.”””
hmmm.. providing a basis for evaluating the ISM-modified heliosphere.
Chris Reeve says:
Is it really nonsense?
For the purpose of any significant interaction with the Sun’s feedback currents circuit I say it is.
Mars has some sparse pockets of crustal field in the equatorial regions, less than 200nT , and Venus’ field is barely detectable at less than 10 nT while Earth’s at 60,000nT (Sibera pole) is still negligible in comparison with Jupiter’s of 1 mT at the poles. For magnetic flux rope with electro-magnetic energy of up to and above 10^20 Joules minor magnetic fields, even the Earth’s one, is no attraction, only Jupiter is able to swing it. Most of flux ropes ending into the Arctic are of order 10^14 Joules or million times weaker than those powering bursts of Jupiter’s aurora.
Geomagnetic storms that ignite Earth’s auroras are most frequent during the months around the equinoxes, which is a function of the heliospheric geometry.
I am certain that Mr. Tornhill as an electrical engineer is well acquainted with the fundamentals of the electro-magnetic forces.
Re: “Just a warning to anyone reading about the very local interstellar medium (VLISM) anything written before 2009 that does not take into account the solar wind charge exchange (SWCX) issue that has been skewing the site lines like for years and years and leading them to believe the surrounding VLISM is warm and ionized throughout, will mislead your perceptions. That solar wind charge exchange issue is now being delt with.”
I would add some additional facts to the debate over the interstellar medium’s charge-carrying capacity …
The interstellar “clouds” are in fact highly filamentary. Look up Verschuur’s papers and observe the maps for yourself. These are the most spaghetti-like “clouds” ever witnessed by mankind. Filaments are the characteristic behavior of plasmas conducting electrical current within the laboratory.
A gas can begin to ignore gravity with less than 1% ionization, given an ambient electromagnetic field. That makes it that much harder to ignore the vast relative difference in strength between EM and gravity.
The very fact that Verschuur sees critical ionization velocities associated with the filaments suggests a laboratory-verified mechanism for ionizing the interstellar medium.
The IBEX ribbon observed at the heliopause can very easily be interpreted as a confirmation that the heliosphere is in fact a charge sheath and the heliopause is its double layer (and also the Sun’s virtual cathode). See Wal Thornhill’s site for more detail …
http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=74fgmwne
Also, the very fact that we see an interstellar magnetic field strongly suggests that there are currents there causing it. That would clearly be the first explanation if a magnetic field was observed in the laboratory.
Martin Lewitt says:
January 10, 2011 at 6:48 am
Wayne,
“Take a Horizon-like simulator and add four extra tiny test particles along with the planets.”
You might get a qualitative effect similar to that of GR if you can change the simulator so to account for the speed of gravity, during the same time step, more distant particles will be experiencing a planet where they were at an earlier time step than a closer particle. Adding some quadrupole moment to the solar point mass would also help.
—
Thanks Martin, you’re right, gravity moves at c so it affects body one from where you see body two, not where body two actually is located at any time. I did develop one way to implement GR correction without additional terms, keep enough prior states in a circular buffer so seek by prior offsets of the proper back intervals are very fast. Instant inserts and no deletions and you always know from the prior iteration exactly where your relativity corrected position is, +/- 1. Set a limit on how much of the correction to be guaranteed but never all, such as will handle 99.9% of all GR correction but not 100% therefore interpolation also drops. The round off errors will drown out the tiny bit remaining anyway and it’s centered by design anyway.
But don’t think quadrupole moment would be proper, that is add anything but processing time, in this case for we have no hyperbolic orbits and that effect doesn’t seem to come into play but in those and high eccentricy elliptics. Thanks anyway. I enjoyed their stab at explaining the pioneers little problem I that paper, I’ll read it much deeper later. Thanks.
Geoff Sharp says:
January 9, 2011 at 5:15 pm
AM is being perturbed (AMP) which is changing the regular pattern brought about by the acceleration/deceleration phases of solar velocity.
You cannot perturb AM as it is conserved.
It’s time for you to become fully acquainted with the research.
Your wiggle-matching is not ‘research’.
I’m travelling so now is the time to hurl further insults [‘pathetic’, etc] as I have little time to devote to this.
vukcevic says:
January 10, 2011 at 12:49 pm
Geomagnetic storms that ignite Earth’s auroras are most frequent during the months around the equinoxes, which is a function of the heliospheric geometry.
They are least frequent during the solstices is the correct way of saying it. And not a function of the heliosphere but of the Earth [the angle the dipole makes with the solar wind].
vukcevic says:
January 10, 2011 at 12:49 pm
Most of flux ropes ending into the Arctic are of order 10^14 Joules or million times weaker than those powering bursts of Jupiter’s aurora.
You must mean by ‘flux rope’ something different from what space physicists do. Flux ropes come from the Sun and do not depend on what they hit, Earth or Jupiter. Part of doing science is to learn the going terminology, otherwise communication is impossible.
tallbloke says:
January 9, 2011 at 2:57 pm
I note that Wolff says the first to point out the similarity between the sunspot time series and planetary orbits was Wolf who very briefly summarized that work
in a letter to Carrington. Have you come across that work or the letter?
Two pages:
http://www.leif.org/EOS/1859MNRAS.pdf
http://www.leif.org/EOS/1859MNRASb.pdf
Leif Svalgaard says:
January 11, 2011 at 8:30 pm
…………….
No I do not, so lets keep it clear.
Two points :
If flux rope’s direction is random than those that miss a magnetosphere do not lose any protons, so they will not count for feedback purpose. Even so it is not necessarily guaranteed that a CME will travel in strait line (analogy: lightning never does)
(this is my old diagram I updated for the tallbloke’s thread
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC5.htm
nonsense I hear you say. Fine.
Second point is made in this paper:
Mursula, K kalevi.mursula@oulu.fi, University of Oulu, Linnanmaa, Oulu, 90014, Finland
The coronal mass ejections (CME) have been observed by the SOHO/LASCO coronagraphs nearly continuously since 1996. These observations have been collected in a database which contains thousands of CMEs whose detailed properties have been studied and discussed in a large number of papers. Here we study the spatial distribution of CMEs in the solar atmosphere. We note on a serious, systematic error in the hemispheric and longitudinal location of the CMEs included in the latter half of the SOHO/LASCO catalog. This error greatly distorts previous results on the spatial location of CMEs at that time. Here we correct the SOHO/LASCO CME catalog for this error and analyze the hemispheric and longitudinal asymmetries in CME occurrence according to the corrected CME database. We show that these results are essentially different from those obtained from the uncorrected catalog. E.g., in the corrected CME catalog the northern hemisphere produces more CMEs than the south in most years in 1997-2007 while the south is clearly more active according to the original catalog. We note on signatures of similar mid-term quasi-periodicities (quasi- biannual oscillations) in CME occurrence that are seen in several other solar and heliospheric parameters. We also find evidence for active longitudes in the CME data, which persist for the entire SOHO interval (solar cycle 23).
vukcevic says:
January 12, 2011 at 1:32 am
nonsense I hear you say. Fine.
Indeed
Second point is made in this paper
has nothing to do with anything.
Hey, no the big dill, even Nobel laureates write nonsense:
Luc Montagnier, who shared the Nobel prize for medicine in 2008 for his part in establishing that HIV causes AIDS, says he has evidence that DNA can send spooky electromagnetic imprints of itself into distant cells and fluids. …………. the basic set-up is as follows. Two adjacent but physically separate test tubes were placed within a copper coil and subjected to a very weak extremely low frequency electromagnetic field of 7 hertz. The apparatus was isolated from Earth’s natural magnetic field to stop it interfering with the experiment. One tube contained a fragment of DNA around 100 bases long; the second tube contained pure water.
After 16 to 18 hours, both samples were independently subjected to the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), a method routinely used to amplify traces of DNA by using enzymes to make many copies of the original material. The gene fragment was apparently recovered from both tubes, even though one should have contained just water (see diagram).
http://www.kurzweilai.net/forums/topic/nobel-laureate-claims-teleported-dna
According to the Julian calendar, today is the New Years day (still celebrated in my family), so I wish you and the rest a happy one.
Vuk etc. says:
January 13, 2011 at 2:07 am
Hey, no the big dill, even Nobel laureates write nonsense
We all know you have a high opinion about yourself and your ‘work’ to benefit all of mankind, but there is low-grade nonsense and then rare high-grade nonsense.
vukcevic says:
January 12, 2011 at 1:32 am
E.g., in the corrected CME catalog the northern hemisphere produces more CMEs than the south in most years in 1997-2007 while the south is clearly more active according to the original catalog. We note on signatures of similar mid-term quasi-periodicities (quasi- biannual oscillations) in CME occurrence that are seen in several other solar and heliospheric parameters. We also find evidence for active longitudes in the CME data, which persist for the entire SOHO interval (solar cycle 23).
~
Good one there Vuks and Happy New Year to you.
This may take a moment though. (which I don’t have now)
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC5.htm
Leif.. be safe.. in your travells. And don’t forget to eat the sweet..
Whether noteworthy or not, volcanic activity slowed June to August of 2010.
2010: Volcanic Year in Review Erik Klemetti
..June 2010
June was a quieter month in the volcanic realm..
July 2010
The summer doldrums of volcanoes hit in full force – with a lot of news coming from volcanoes calming down, not acting up..
August 2010
August started off slowly, with discussions about the threat of volcanism in the Caucasus Mountains, dome collapse at Indonesia’s Karangetang and more eruptions at Colombia’s Galeras..
http://bigthink.com/ideas/26416
vukcevic says:
January 10, 2011 at 12:49 pm
For magnetic flux rope with electro-magnetic energy of up to and above 10^20 Joules minor magnetic fields, even the Earth’s one, is no attraction, only Jupiter is able to swing it. Most of flux ropes ending into the Arctic are of order 10^14 Joules or million times weaker than those powering bursts of Jupiter’s aurora.
~
Is there a link to that? Where in the system is the Jupe located during times of these events. Could get interesting to note locations in the system in relation to its spots as well.
Anyone tell Geoff that there is a big dent the the southern hemisphere of the heliosphere and fewer sunspots in the southern hemisphere of the solar disk. Or is that something to do with AMP. Around here AMP is Advanced Military Packaging. lol
Vuks is this suggesting a return loop..
“””Magnetic reconnection at the heliospheric current sheet and the formation of closed magnetic field lines in the solar wind
We have identified a sunward-directed reconnection exhaust in the solar wind at a crossing of the heliospheric current sheet, HCS, by the ACE spacecraft. The exhaust was embedded within an interval of counterstreaming suprathermal electron strahls that provides direct evidence that reconnection produced closed (i.e., doubly connected to the Sun) magnetic field lines sunward of the reconnection site. We suggest that local, quasi-stationary reconnection at the HCS may, in general, be an important source of closed magnetic field lines often observed in the vicinity of the HCS. “””
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2006…/2006GL027188.shtml
Dr. S. what say you?
Dr. S., is the sun reconnecting to itself with the flopping around of the HCS?
“””Direct evidence for prolonged magnetic reconnection at a continuous
x-line within the heliospheric current sheet
J. T. Gosling,1 S. Eriksson, T. D. Phan, D. E. Larson, R. M. Skoug,
and D. J. McComas
1. Introduction
[2] It has recently been demonstrated [e.g., Gosling et al., 2005a, 2005b, 2006; Phan et al., 2006; Davis et al., 2006] that magnetic reconnection occurs frequently in the solar wind and produces Petschek-type exhausts, i.e., exhausts of jetting plasma bounded by Alfve´n or slow-mode waves
[Petschek, 1964], emanating from reconnection sites. The exhausts are identified as intervals of roughly Alfve´nic accelerated or decelerated flow confined to magnetic field
reversal regions that usually take the form of bifurcated current sheets. The exhausts are embedded within the solar wind flow and typically are convected past a spacecraft on
time scales ranging from less than a minute to several 10s of minutes, corresponding to local exhaust widths ranging up to ~2 x 10^6 km. Reconnection exhausts are observed at
thin current sheets in either low-speed wind or in association with coronal mass ejections, CMEs, in plasma predominantly having low proton beta. Only a few events have been identified at the HCS, which separates open field lines of opposite magnetic polarity and which generally wraps
entirely around the Sun. Reconnection at the HCS produces closed field lines sunward of a reconnection site [Gosling et al., 2006] and disconnected (from the Sun) field lines antisunward
[Gosling et al., 2005b].
[3] Multi-spacecraft observations of solar wind reconnection exhausts have provided evidence that the exhausts result from quasi-stationary reconnection at extended reconnection
sites (X-lines), in one case persisting for at least 2.5 hours..”””
http://lasp.colorado.edu/~eriksson/2006GL029033_gosling.pdf
Carla says:
January 13, 2011 at 12:48 pm
Vuk is this suggesting a return loop..
is the sun reconnecting to itself with the flopping around of the HCS?
Vuk doesn’t know what he is talking about.
About half of the field lines in the solar wind [at Earth] are closed field lines [coming from an identifiable place on the Sun and returning to close to that same place]. The rest are open [e.g. close somewhere out in interstellar space – ‘at infinity’]. It has long been a question whether some of these open lines reconnect on their way out from the Sun, thus reducing the amount of open flux. One would expect this to happen, but it is not known by how much. New observations are beginning to give us a handle on that. In any event, what happens to the solar wind after it has left the Sun [open, close, reconnection, whatever] cannot propagate upwind back to the Sun to any significant degree and therefore cannot modulate the solar cycle. The same is the case with what happens at the heliopause or termination shock.
Carla thanks for the links, I shall read carefully.
Carla says:
January 13, 2011 at 12:10 pm
……….
Thus we have assembled the first such synoptic view of the propagation of a CME-driven interplanetary shock from the Sun to Saturn, from in-situ measurements at the Earth and Jupiter (1
and 5 AU), and model-propagated plasma parameters at Jupiter and Saturn (5 and 9 AU). At each planet, a strong auroral response is recorded, based on POLAR images at the Earth, on Cassini radio observations at Jupiter, and on HST FUV images at Saturn. Figure 3 summarizes the observations.
http://www.sp.ph.ic.ac.uk/~mgaland/ihy/Prange_et_al_2004.pdf
Leif Svalgaard says:
January 13, 2011 at 2:11 pm
Vuk doesn’t know what he is talking about.
Perhaps you should have looked at the link
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC5.htm
vukcevic says:
January 13, 2011 at 3:16 pm
Figure 3 summarizes the observations.
Just nice confirmation of the decades long held belief that CMEs steepen into shocks with increasing distance. Does not say that ‘flux tubes’ are a million times stronger, because they hit Jupiter or Saturn.
“Vuk doesn’t know what he is talking about.”
Perhaps you should have looked at the link
It is a nice confirmation of what I said.
Wayne,
“But don’t think quadrupole moment would be proper, that is add anything but processing time, in this case for we have no hyperbolic orbits and that effect doesn’t seem to come into play but in those and high eccentricy elliptics. Thanks anyway.”
I agree if it is too difficult, this would be qualitative anyway. The solar system itself has a quadrupole moment that might give us some qualitative effect. Perhaps if the particles were in orbit say 15 to 30 degrees from the plane of the ecliptic we would notice more of that qualitative effect, even without the solar quadrupole.
Congrats on having a working simulator.
Leif Svalgaard says:
January 13, 2011 at 3:25 pm
………..
Exactly, but as usual you assume to know what I written without reading it, and than construct your ‘attack’ not only on wrong assumption but a wrong premise too.
vukcevic says:
January 14, 2011 at 1:49 am
Exactly, but as usual you assume to know what I written without reading it, and than construct your ‘attack’ not only on wrong assumption but a wrong premise too.
What makes you think that I have not read it? You cannot assume that you can tell if I read it from the IP-address alone.
I was only suggesting the possibility that degree of energy exchange between a magnetosphere and the CME’s magnetic field may be limited by the strength of the magnetosphere, i.e. that the Jupiter’s magnetosphere is capable of mach more powerful ‘reconnection’ than the Earth’s one.
What is your view?
(1 Joule = 10^7 erg)
With an observed energy gain of about 4.4 x 10^-11 erg/ion in the exhaust, we estimate
that at least 1.2 x 10^24 ergs of magnetic energy, and probably considerably more, was extracted from the HCS in the 31 August–1 September 2001 event. For comparison,
the energy dissipated in a major geomagnetic storm is estimated to be ~10^24 ergs [Baker et al., 1997] whereas the energy released in a large flare or CME is ~10^32 ergs.
http://lasp.colorado.edu/~eriksson/2006GL029033_gosling.pdf
(1 Joule = 10^7 erg)