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-
Re: “I remind readers that a plasma does not contain ‘particles’ in the regular sense. Think quantum fields and field effects. Waves, not bits. If it is hot and tenuous, it can still be electrically conductive.”
Plasmas can conduct even when they are cool and tenuous. There is actually a “dark mode” (in addition to the “glow” and “arc” modes) of the plasma V-I curve. This is *incredibly* important for every single person on WUWT to realize.
This dark mode appears to cause *MASSIVE* confusion for the physics establishment. People tend to assume that a lack of EM emissions means a lack of electrical current. And when they don’t see every single element of the circuit lit up like a Christmas Tree, they ignore the fact that those few components that they *DO* see are lined up in a filamentary web …
If you ask me, it is this unfounded expectation that conduction requires an emission which is causing all of the problems in solar physics today. Electricity is a bitch to see, even down here on Earth. Making matters worse is that, within the plasma universe view, the Sun’s power input is an electron drift through the heliosphere. This is not something which people are going to observe without trying. We’re talking about a *net* movement of *random* electron motions.
Measuring that would require multiple probes, right?
Leif Svalgaard says:
January 7, 2011 at 3:05 pm (Edit)
John Day says:
January 7, 2011 at 2:18 pm
Dr. Svalgaard, what is your take on this article?
(and the reply) The plasma in the spicules has a range of temperatures, most of it below 100,000K, but enough of the plasma has temperatures above 1 million K that when injected into the corona it simply heats the corona [pouring hot water into cold]. One must remember that the corona is VERY tenuous and the chromosphere [with the spicules] is much denser and has much, much more mass that the corona, so it doesn’t take much. Actually most of material in the spicules falls right back onto the Sun, but enough [and it only takes a small fraction] makes it into the corona.
So, please continue.
“Temperature” of mass – as we coommonly use the term about mass and gasses, so I am assuming it extends into plasmas – is directly and only proportional to the (average) speed of the molecules/ions in the gas/plasma.
At some convenient point, we (solar experts) have decided that the sun’s “atmosphere” stops and the sun’s “surface” begins.
So, if the atmosphere is extremely “thin” compared to the “surface”of the sun, then the average distance traveled of the particles in the “atmosphere” must be many thousand times further than those ions/particles down under the “surface” of the sun. Distance between collisions in a gas is directly related to density of the gas and so it is related to temperature of the ions/molecules in the gas, right?
So, how much is this extreme temperature difference between the “atmosphere” and the “surface” of the sun due to the different densities of the material in each “phase.”
Or does my analogy break down, as if you were trying to describe the difference in temperature between the ocean surface and the water valor immediately above the ocean surface?
RACook
Perhaps this might answer your question.
Firstly plasma is not gas, its the fourth sate of matter. So consider this
Quote
After all, stars are not composed of hot air, not even really hot air: they’re composed of plasma. Plasma is electromagnetically active. The fast-moving particles are really ions; their movement is otherwise known as an electrical current. That current generates an inwardly directed magnetic force that constricts the current into a filament—called a jet by plasma-impaired astronomers and a Birkeland current by plasma physicists. Electrical forces accelerate the ions, electrons, and charged dust to different velocities, which astronomers interpret as different temperatures.
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/00current.htm
Unquote
It might clear your mind
Myrrh says:
January 7, 2011 at 9:25 pm
Relativity – Mass Increase is a FRAUD
Relativists, or more specifically, mathematicians, have no clue what the word MASS means. They have never defined this word consistently. This is why they use the word MASS synonymously with WEIGHT, and with a multitude of many other terms as well, …. and they do so whenever it suits their arguments!
Apart from the shouting, what think ye all of this? Is this true?
No, it is pure nonsense.
Chris Reeve says:
January 7, 2011 at 10:13 pm
Making matters worse is that, within the plasma universe view, the Sun’s power input is an electron drift through the heliosphere.
As is that.
racookpe1978 says:
January 7, 2011 at 11:11 pm
So, if the atmosphere is extremely “thin” compared to the “surface”of the sun, then the average distance traveled of the particles in the “atmosphere” must be many thousand times further than those ions/particles down under the “surface” of the sun.
Yes, this is the case. But the temperature is not really a measure of the density, but is a measure of the average [random] speed of the particles. If you jerk the particles [molecules, atoms, ions, etc] around more, they are said [i.e. defined] to have a higher temperature.
Additionally, ionized oxygen has been measured at 200million kelvin at up to 1 or 2 solar diameters distance from the sun. So – the OBSERVED picture of Sol and its atmosphere has temperature DECREASING as we get closer to Sol. And of course, sunspots allow us to glimpse inside the sun where it is OBSERVABLY even cooler than the surface. Does this not suggest that energy is coming from without, rather than within, the Sun?
Grey Lensman says:
January 7, 2011 at 11:20 pm
Firstly plasma is not gas, its the fourth sate of matter.
Plasma in the sun and in space is a gas too. And an almost perfect gas at that. In addition to sharing characteristics with a gas [e.g. compressibility], a plasma has some additional properties, so it is more correct to say that a plasma is a special type of gas.
Floyd says:
January 7, 2011 at 11:44 pm
And of course, sunspots allow us to glimpse inside the sun where it is OBSERVABLY even cooler than the surface. Does this not suggest that energy is coming from without, rather than within, the Sun?
No, a sunspot’s magnetic field hinders the free flow of heat from below and diverts it around, away from the spot, which then becomes cooler [and appears darker]. It does not mean that the sun ins cooler on the inside. We can measure the sound speed inside the sun [using helioseimology – same way as we prospect for oil in the Earth] and find that is matches that of a hot interior. [the sound speed is higher in hot material – For a given ideal gas the sound speed depends only on its temperature – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_sound ]. We can even measure the temperature this way.
The sun does not “heat” the corona as a stove burner heats a pot of water. It is more like a microwave heats a cup of water. Enough energy and the water in the cup vaporizes without heating the cup. Direct transfer of electro-motive-force (emf) energy to the material. This causes the material to radiate energy as if it was very hot! The sun surface material radiates as if it were 6,000 degrees, the coronal material radiates as if it were 1,000,000,000 degrees. The coronal material is very thin, a vacuum with only a few very high energy ions per square meter. “Heat” in degrees is not a measurement energy in an object, it is a measurement of temperature of the object.
‘ A 100 degree ball of lead has more energy then a 100 degree ball of feathers.’ pg 😉
I have tried cooling my house with a magnet, it does not work
No and again no. Plasma is plasma and gas is gas. Two different things with very different properties. Fundamental physics
Chris Reeve:
That’s fine.
That’s impugning motives.
To get into the state our sun is, being able to spread such a huge quantity of energy around for so long, the source of this energy must have a greater potential of whatever (2nd LoT). Since we seem unable to measure this let alone see it even we on earth are in between the source (external what?) and the sink (sun) and the mechanism how the transfer works is well known, as you tell (or have been told), we for sure would be able to link into this primary transfer and use it to our advantage, preferably at night. Hey, the source is more powerful than the sun’s output! Would be heaven for all perpetual motion machinists.
OTOH, we tested the thermonuclear reaction in the lab. Well, the lab was unrecognizable afterwards but… the scientists work on the problem and in about 50 years they may perhaps tell us that in about 50 years… they will have it under control.
@myrrh
Absolute and total nonsense. The guy in your link says:
“There is no difference whatsoever between MASS and WEIGHT. The only reason the “MASS is not equal to WEIGHT” fallacy is perpetuated by the mathematicians,”
If this were true, then the “weightless” astronauts and objects you see floating around inside orbiting spacecraft would also have zero mass, right?
Then try this little “thought experiment”:
You’re an astronaut floating inside a spacecraft in outer space. Also floating in front of you are two large painted spheres, one meter in diameter. One is made of solid lead, the other is styrofoam. But they’re coated with a paint that makes them look identical from the outside. How can you tell which one is the lead sphere?
Answer: Punch each sphere as hard as you can with your fist. The styrofoam sphere will fly away across the room. The lead sphere, even though it’s “weightless”, still has enormous mass and will resist your effort to put it into motion (Newton’s First Law). In fact, if you hit it hard enough, you’ll probably break the bones in your fist.
In other words, it will still feel and act “heavy” even though it’s floating around with zero weight.
That’s why it takes a lot more fuel to accelerate a big rocket ship through space than an astronaut with only a jetpack.
So mass is a fundamental property of matter, whereever it may be located in the universe.
@Lensman
You’re thinking of dense plasmas, where the particles collide. Leif is right, a collisionless plasma, like in the corona, acts more like a gas.
https://www.worldscibooks.com/etextbook/p020/p020_chap1_1.pdf
Glad to see the concept of the Electric Universe is beginning to surface in the mainstream blogosphere – it would be good to have a proper discussion rather than supercilious comments decrying it.
Grey Lensman says:
January 8, 2011 at 2:49 am
No and again no. Plasma is plasma and gas is gas. Two different things with very different properties. Fundamental physics
http://www.edinformatics.com/math_science/states_of_matter.htm :
The fourth state of matter is plasma. Plasma is an ionized gas, a gas into which sufficient energy is provided to free electrons from atoms or molecules and to allow both species, ions and electrons, to coexist.
“The American Institute of Physics has just recently announced that they will now officially recognize the Plasma Universe as an official field of study in physics”
I have seen this statement repeated verbatim on quite a number of EU sites. However, I have not been able to Google-fu any confirmation of it. Does anyone have such a link?
John Day says:
January 8, 2011 at 6:48 am
Absolute and total nonsense.
Indeed, along with most other comments that any thread on the sun eventually degenerates into. It is a travesty that a ‘skeptical’ blog is burdened with the nonsense from the usual suspects and geniuses polluting the site.
‘taint solved once you read past the headline….. anyway, what do the plasma physicists think of it all?
Dr. Svalgaard: “There are not two schools of thought.”
From Interspace News (February 27, 2008):
“There is a lot of excitement over this project [THEMIS] in the research community, [Dr. Vassillis] Angelopoulos [THEMIS principal investigator at University of California Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory in Berkeley, Calf.] said. For more than three decades, scientists around the globe have been embattled about where these lights originate so brilliantly and suddenly. And like the two polar caps at opposite ends of the planet, there are also opposing viewpoints.”
So, the THEMIS principal investigator for NASA knows there are opposing schools of thought.
Back to the news article:
“In the Reconnection Theory camp, members say the magnetosphere on the night side is like two rubber bands that stretch, snap and then reconnect into “U” shape bands that release their energy — much like a slingshot. That action would then accelerate the particles toward Earth causing the light show.”
“On the other side of the hypothesis is the Current Disruption Theory, which says at the onset of a substorm, higher frequency instabilities are excited so that the plasma and electromagnetic field form a turbulent state, which then short circuits the current that is now forced to go directly into the atmosphere. This current accelerates the electrons that in return cause the light show.”
http://www.interspacenews.com/FeatureArticle/tabid/130/Default.aspx?id=524
To highlight: “…there are also opposing viewpoints.” — an in substance summary of Dr. Vassillis Angelopoulos, THEMIS principal investigator at University of California Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory in Berkeley, California.
Dr. Svalgaard, you are entitled to your own opinion (and what school of thought you subscribe to), but you are not entitled to make up your own facts.
So, yes, there are two schools of thought: The Magnetic Reconnection Theory versus The Current Disruption Theory.
Or does Dr. Vassillis Angelopoulos not know what he is talking about?
It’s rather simple: A neutral gas is not subject to electromagnetic forces, i.e., the magnetic force and the electric force; a plasma is subject to electromagnetic forces, i.e., the magnetic force and the electric force.
Why?
Because there are free electrons and ions in a body of plasma.
That is why plasma is treated as a seperate state of matter.
James F. Evans says:
January 8, 2011 at 8:55 am
So, yes, there are two schools of thought: The Magnetic Reconnection Theory versus The Current Disruption Theory.
Or does Dr. Vassillis Angelopoulos not know what he is talking about?
He is talking about the initiation of a substorm. Since the 1970s we have known that what happens is a disruption of a current in the magnetosphere diverting particles Earthwards. See e.g. Figure 15 of http://www.leif.org/research/Geomagnetic-Response-to-Solar-Wind.pdf from 1973. I described it thus: “The process may be described as a local collapse or disruption of the magnetotail current […] The plasma moving rapidly towards the earth is partly injected into the trapping region and partly spirals down along field lines (your beloved Birkeland currents) where precipitating electrons cause brilliant, rapidly moving auroras. Thus the disrupted magnetotail current establishes a new circuit from the dawnside tail to the dawnside auroral oval along the geomagnetic field lines, flows then in the ionosphere to the duskside oval and finally up to the duskside magnetotail as shown in Figure 15”
What the THEMIS issue is, is what causes the disruption: local reconnection or turbulent instabilities that occur in any plasma. Both could be involved, these are details. What you ignore [but Angelopoulos and every space physicist well know is that the very existence of the magnetotail and the pent-up energy that is being released depends on and owe their existence to magnetic reconnection on the front side of the magnetosphere that sweep the field lines into the tail, thus setting the stage for the disruption.
James F. Evans – when I was studying for my El-mech HND, we had it drummed into us that magnetic reconnection was impossible. James Clerk Maxwell’s work on electro-magnetism supports this view. Has magnetic reconnection been empirically observed anywhere to support the theory?
James F. Evans says:
January 8, 2011 at 8:55 am
So, yes, there are two schools of thought: The Magnetic Reconnection Theory versus The Current Disruption Theory.
Look carefully at the diagram in your link as see if you can spot the arrow labeled “Region of Tail Reconnection”. You see, as the field lines are continuously swept into the tail by reconnecting with the solar wind at the front, they must disconnect from the solar wind and reconnect [north with south] in order to return to the Earth whence they came. In the meantime the configuration that is being stressed by all that reconnection is highly unstable and often the tail current disrupts, as simple as that. The confusion that some people have is whether this reconnection in the tail is the sole trigger of the substorm. Since the current disruption occurs much closer to the Earth than the reconnection point, there should really nit have been any confusion. It is good that Angelopoulos is seeing the light.
stu says:
January 8, 2011 at 9:36 am
Has magnetic reconnection been empirically observed anywhere to support the theory?
Yes, “This paper reviews the progress in understanding the fundamental physics of magnetic reconnection, focusing on significant results in the past decade from dedicated laboratory experiments, numerical simulations [using Maxwell’s equations], and space astrophysical observations”
http://www.leif.org/EOS/Yamada-Reconnection.2007.pdf
Leif Svalgaard says:
January 8, 2011 at 9:54 am
http://www.leif.org/EOS/Yamada-Reconnection-2007.pdf