AN EXPERIMENT to create a piece of the Sun on Earth may have helped solve one
of the great mysteries about our nearest star鈥攚hy its diffuse outer
atmosphere is much hotter than its surface.
精东传媒s have long puzzled over how the Sun’s corona reaches a million
kelvin when its surface beneath is only a few thousand kelvin. One theory is
that disturbances in the Sun’s magnetic field called Alfv茅n waves can
transfer heat to the cloud of electrically charged ions and electrons of the
coronal plasma without heating the surface. But testing this idea with a
spacecraft would…
