The international group of scientists revealed a riddle, why the accumulations of hot gas emitted by the Sun are not cooled as the theory predicts. When the solar wind faces ground, the temperature reaches 100-200 thousand degrees Celsius, which is ten times more than expected. This is reported in the article published in Journal of Plasma Physics.
To model the solar wind, the researchers took advantage of high-performance DIRAC computing based on supercomputers of Lester and Cambridge University. It turned out that the cause of high temperature is the small-scale reloading of the power lines of the magnetic field, which occur in turbulent streams of solar wind. The restructuring of power lines releases a huge amount of energy, heating and accelerating ions and electrons.
In the future, scientists want to check the results of modeling with the data that the Solar Orbiter will receive, launched by the European Space Agency.
Research results will help better learn about the mechanisms of solar wind – the flow of charged particles, which can potentially lead to satellite breakdowns and pose a threat to astronauts in an near-earth orbit.