Sun’s Magnetic Field Is Ten Times Stronger Than Previously Believed

Eddie Gonzales Jr. – MessageToEagle.com – As the latest research shows, the sun’s magnetic field is ten times stronger than previously believed.

Using the Swedish 1-m Solar Telescope at Roque de los Muchachos Observatory, La Palma in the Canary Islands, researchers studied a very strong solar flare which erupted near the surface of the sun on 10 September 2017.

Over a 10-day period, they determined the strength of the flare’s magnetic field with unprecedented accuracy and these results change our understanding of the processes that happen in the sun’s immediate atmosphere.

“Everything that happens in the sun’s outer atmosphere is dominated by the magnetic field, but we have very few measurements of its strength and spatial characteristics,” Dr. Kuridze, Research Fellow at Aberystwyth University said in a press release.

“These are critical parameters, the most important for the physics of the solar corona. It is a little like trying to understand the Earth’s climate without being able to measure its temperature at various geographical locations.

Measuring 1,400,000 kilometers across (109 times larger than Earth) and 150,000,000 kilometers from Earth, the sun’s corona extends millions of kilometers above the surface. Solar flares appear as bright flashes and occur when magnetic energy that has built up in the solar atmosphere is suddenly released.

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Until now, successful measurement of the magnetic field has been hindered by the weakness of the signal from the sun’s atmosphere that reaches Earth and caries information about the magnetic field, and limitations in the instrumentation available. The magnetic fields reported in this study are similar to those of a typical fridge magnet and around 100 times weaker than the magnetic field encountered in an MRI scanner.

However, they are still responsible for the confinement of the solar plasma, which make up solar flares, as far as 20,000 km above the sun’s surface.

These solar flares can lead to storms which, if they hit Earth, form the northern lights – the Aurora Borealis. They can also disrupt communications satellites and GPS systems, as proved to be the case on this occasion in September 2017.

Written by Eddie Gonzales Jr. – MessageToEagle.com Staff Writer