![]() Think of boiling a pot of water using thousands of individual matches. And, the theory goes, they could add up to make the corona toasty. If such events exist, they may pop up across the sun on a nearly constant basis. Some scientists suspect that especially tiny flares, or "nanoflares," which are too small for even the most advanced telescopes to spot, may be responsible. "That's like standing right in front of a campfire, and as you back away, it gets a lot hotter," Mason said. The surface of the sun, in contrast, is much cooler, registering only in the thousands of degrees. ![]() Telescope observations suggest that the sun's corona sizzles at temperatures of millions of degrees Fahrenheit. The study zeroes in on a mystery that has left even senior astrophysicists scratching their heads. ![]() "It was a massive effort from everyone involved," said Lewandowski, professor of physics and fellow of JILA, a joint research institute between CU Boulder and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Study co-author Heather Lewandowski agreed, noting that the study wouldn't be possible without the undergrads who contributed an estimated 56,000 hours of work to the project. "We really wanted to emphasize to these students that they were doing actual scientific research," said James Mason, lead author of the study and an astrophysicist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. The results suggest that solar flares may not be responsible for superheating the sun's corona, as a popular theory in astrophysics suggests. The researchers, including 995 undergraduate and graduate students, published their finding May 9 in The Astrophysical Journal. The research represents a nearly-unprecedented feat of data analysis: From 2020 to 2022, the small army of mostly first- and second-year students examined the physics of more than 600 real solar flares - gigantic eruptions of energy from the sun's roiling corona.
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