Solar flares are hotter than beforehand thought

JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:

Solar flares are intense bursts of sunshine and particles from the solar. While they will pose hazards for issues like satellites, these flares are additionally stunning, dramatic and extremely sizzling. NPR’s Nell Greenfieldboyce stories on simply how excessive the temperatures can get.

NELL GREENFIELDBOYCE, BYLINE: The solar is sizzling – no duh – however how sizzling is it? Alexander Russell is with the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. He says completely different elements of the solar have completely different temperatures. The core is round 27 million levels Fahrenheit. It’s hotter than the floor, which is simply round 10,000 levels.

ALEXANDER RUSSELL: And then it truly begins to get hotter as you progress out into the outer layer.

GREENFIELDBOYCE: That outer layer is the ghostly ring you see throughout a complete photo voltaic eclipse. It could be over 2 million levels. What Russell wished to know was the temperature of photo voltaic flares. These flares erupt when a sudden launch of magnetic power sends particles taking pictures out. There’s two sorts of particles – electrons and ions. Telescopes taking a look at flares can measure the temperature of the electrons.

RUSSELL: And we have sort of simply assumed, effectively, the ion temperature can be the identical because the electron temperature.

GREENFIELDBOYCE: The bother is, that does not appear to be true, no less than not in response to latest laptop simulations and measurements in near-Earth area. They say that really, ions can get method hotter than electrons. So Russell and his colleagues did some calculations, and so they now say that photo voltaic flares might be greater than six occasions hotter than beforehand identified – over 100 million levels Fahrenheit, possibly even as much as 180 million.

RUSSELL: Which is sort of a loopy quantity.

GREENFIELDBOYCE: They’ve revealed their evaluation in Astrophysical Journal Letters. One one that was blissful to see it’s James Drake. He’s a physicist on the University of Maryland. He and his analysis companions have lengthy been learning how magnetic power will get dumped into particles like electrons and ions. He says the distinction between the 2 has been neglected in relation to photo voltaic flares.

JAMES DRAKE: We’ve been confronting the photo voltaic physicists, telling them that although they’ve measured in a number of element what is going on on with the electrons, they’re lacking one thing huge.

GREENFIELDBOYCE: He says including this piece in ought to enhance scientists’ understanding of how photo voltaic flares and their related phenomena truly work, which might assist shield {hardware} like satellites and other people like astronauts from these harmful however superior eruptions.

Nell Greenfieldboyce, NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF CHRIS JOSS’ “TUNE DOWN”) Transcript offered by NPR, Copyright NPR.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This textual content might not be in its last type and could also be up to date or revised sooner or later. Accuracy and availability could fluctuate. The authoritative file of NPR’s programming is the audio file.