{"id":1914,"date":"2015-01-04T10:07:40","date_gmt":"2015-01-04T10:07:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revoscience.com\/en\/?p=1914"},"modified":"2023-09-06T12:56:08","modified_gmt":"2023-09-06T07:11:08","slug":"the-sun-exploring-as-fire-from-an-ice-cube","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/the-sun-exploring-as-fire-from-an-ice-cube\/","title":{"rendered":"The sun exploring as fire from an ice cube"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This is one of the amazing image of the sun exploring the colored and sparkling stuff that one has ever watched.<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The reddish stuff may look familiar. That\u2019s material in the Sun\u2019s atmosphere, or corona, as imaged by NASA\u2019s orbiting Solar Dynamics Observatory<\/span><\/a>, which has been sending back data for nearly four years. But that ethereal blue and green glow? \u2014 that\u2019s something else entirely.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The glow was captured separately by the orbiting Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array<\/span><\/a> spacecraft, or NuSTAR, and laid over the SDO image to create a composite.  As the most sensitive view of high-energy X-ray radiation streaming off the sun, NuSTAR\u2019s contribution may help scientists solve a long-standing mystery: Why is the corona blisteringly hot while the solar surface is considerably cooler?<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

An hypothesized phenomenon called \u201cnanoflares\u201d may provide the answer.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAt first I thought the whole idea was crazy,\u201d says Fiona Harrison<\/span><\/a>, NuSTAR\u2019s principal investigator and a scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. But she warmed to the idea when she realized that NuSTAR\u2019s sensor could pick up the faint flashes of X-ray radiation that would be emitted by hypothesized nanoflares.Scientists did not originally intend to use NuSTAR to examine the Sun. The orbiting telescope was actually designed to peer deep into the universe \u2014 to look for collapsed stars and black holes, map supernova remnants, and examine galaxies hosting supermassive black holes.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regular solar flares are not hypothetical at all. I\u2019ve written about them many times (here<\/span> and here<\/span><\/a>, for example). They occur when magnetic energy builds up in the Sun\u2019s atmosphere and is then released suddenly with an accompanying burst of radiation across the electromagnetic spectrum.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As their name implies, nanoflares would be much smaller. Should they exist, they may explain why the temperature of the solar corona is 1.8 million degrees Fahrenheit on average while the surface of the sun below it is just 10,800 F.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt is like a flame coming out of an ice cube,\u201d as NASA explained it in a press release<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among scientists, the mystery is known as the \u201ccoronal heating problem.\u201d In short, where is all that heat coming from? The energy released by regular flares alone is not enough to account for it. But if nanoflares really do exist, that might solve the mystery.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is one of the amazing image of the sun exploring the colored and sparkling stuff that one has ever watched. The reddish stuff may look familiar. That\u2019s material in the Sun\u2019s atmosphere, or corona, as imaged by NASA\u2019s orbiting Solar Dynamics Observatory, which has been sending back data for nearly four years. But that ethereal blue […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":1915,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/PIA18906_hires-1024x520.jpg",1024,520,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/PIA18906_hires-1024x520-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/PIA18906_hires-1024x520-300x152.jpg",300,152,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/PIA18906_hires-1024x520.jpg",750,381,false],"large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/PIA18906_hires-1024x520.jpg",750,381,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/PIA18906_hires-1024x520.jpg",1024,520,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/PIA18906_hires-1024x520.jpg",1024,520,false],"ultp_layout_landscape_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/PIA18906_hires-1024x520.jpg",1024,520,false],"ultp_layout_landscape":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/PIA18906_hires-1024x520.jpg",870,442,false],"ultp_layout_portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/PIA18906_hires-1024x520.jpg",600,305,false],"ultp_layout_square":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/PIA18906_hires-1024x520.jpg",600,305,false],"newspaper-x-single-post":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/PIA18906_hires-1024x520.jpg",760,386,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-big":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/PIA18906_hires-1024x520.jpg",550,279,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-list-image":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/PIA18906_hires-1024x520.jpg",95,48,false],"web-stories-poster-portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/PIA18906_hires-1024x520.jpg",640,325,false],"web-stories-publisher-logo":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/PIA18906_hires-1024x520.jpg",96,49,false],"web-stories-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/PIA18906_hires-1024x520.jpg",150,76,false]},"author_info":{"info":["Amrita Tuladhar"]},"category_info":"News<\/a>","tag_info":"News","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1914\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}