Alfven waves may solve solar-corona mystery

摘要

The outer parts of the solar corona are millions of degrees hotter than the surface of the Sun -a fact that has puzzled astrophysicists for quite some time (CERN Courier June 2008 p8). Now David Jess of Queen's University Belfast and colleagues have made major progress in unravelling this mystery. Using the 1 m Swedish SolarTelescope on La Palma in the Canary Islands they observed a tiny conglomeration of highly magnetized bright points on the Sun's surface. Their observations show evidence for Alfven waves, oscillations of magnetized plasma, moving up from the lower solar atmosphere, which may hold the key to the coronal heating.