The further we move away from a heat source, the cooler the air gets. Bizarrely, the same can’t be said for the Sun, but University of Otago scientists may have just explained a key part of why.
Study lead Dr Jonathan Squire, of the Department of Physics, says the surface of the Sun starts at 6000 degree C, but over a short distance of only a few hundred kilometers, it suddenly heats up to more than a million degrees, becoming its atmosphere, or corona.
“This is so hot that the gas escapes the Sun’s gravity as ‘solar wind’, and flies into space, smashing into Earth and other planets.
“We know from measurements and theory that the sudden temperature ju...
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