Plasma loops may explain solar puzzle

• Autores: Anil Ananthaswamy
• Localización: New scientist, ISSN 0262-4079, Nº. 3169, 2018, pág. 9
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • The mystery of the sun's super-hot atmosphere may lie in giant loops of plasma that are mostly invisible to today's solar probes. Now, Gregory Fleishman at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark and his colleagues have shown that these ions aren't distributed uniformly throughout a loop. The researchers analyzed the properties of the electric current that flows through the plasma along the loops, as well as its effect on the ions. They found that regions where the electric current is positive--meaning it is flowing out of the sun's surface--act as ion traps, creating a high density of ions of heavy elements there, while depleting them elsewhere in the loop