physical mechanisms that heat the upper atmosphere to 1 million degrees Fahrenheit tagged posts

A team of physicists, including NJIT’s Gregory Fleishman, has discovered previously undetected energy in the Sun’s coronal loops. Credit: NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory

The Sun’s corona, invisible to the human eye except when it appears briefly as a fiery halo of plasma during a solar eclipse, remains a puzzle even to scientists who study it closely. Located 1,300 miles from the star’s surface, it is more than a hundred times hotter than lower layers much closer to the fusion reactor at the Sun’s core...