The Sun's corona, heated to temperatures exceeding one million Kelvin despite lying above the cooler photosphere, has puzzled astrophysicists since its discovery in the 1940s. Prevailing theories, based on acoustic and magnetohydrodynamic waves, and micro/nano-flares, fail to fully account for this extreme heating or the origins of the supersonic solar wind. We propose a mechanism in which magnetic reconnection rapidly reconfigures field lines and exerts a torque on the magnetic moment of gyrating charged particles. This torque transfers magnetic energy to the particles, effectively doubling their energy and heating the plasma. As particles traverse multiple reconnection sites, they gradually heat to coronal temperatures. With just a few additional crossings, particles can gain enough energy to overcome the Sun's gravity, directly driving solar wind acceleration. Our hypothesis resolves the coronal heating paradox and unifies solar wind dynamics under a universal astrophysical process. This work redefines our understanding of energy transfer in magnetized plasmas, with implications extending to stellar and astrophysical systems.
Physicists have long known that the Sun's magnetic fields make its corona much hotter than the surface of the star itself. But how -- and why -- those fields transport and deposit their energy is still a mystery, as Philip G Judge explains
Galactic globular clusters (GCs) show overwhelming photometric and spectroscopic evidence for the existence of multiple stellar populations. The question of whether or not there exists a GC that represents a true 'simple stellar population' remains open. Here we focus on Ruprecht 106 (R106), a halo GC with [Fe/H]=-1.5 and [alpha/Fe]~0. A previous spectroscopic study found no sign of the Na-O anticorrelation among 9 of its brightest red giants, which led to the conclusion that R106 is a true simple stellar population GC. Here we present new Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Wide Field Camera 3 photo…
Suzaku detected an enhancement of soft X-ray background associated with solar eruptions on 2013 April 14-15. The solar eruptions were accompanied by an M6.5 solar flare and a coronal mass ejection with magnetic flux ropes. The enhanced soft X-ray background showed a slight variation in half a day and then a clear one in a few hours. The former spectrum was composed of oxygen emission lines, while the later one was characterized by a series of emission lines from highly ionized carbon to silicon. The soft X-ray enhancement originated from geocoronal solar wind charge exchange. However, there ap…
The solar coronal heating is a longstanding mystery in astrophysics. Considering that the solar magnetic field is spatially inhomogeneous with considerable magnetic gradient from solar surface to the corona, this work proposes a magnetic gradient pumping (MGP) mechanism and try to explain the formation of hot plasma upflows, such as the hot type II spicules and hot plasma ejections, etc. In MGP mechanism, the magnetic gradients drive the energetic particles to move upwards from the underlying solar atmosphere and form hot upflows. These upflow energetic particles deposit in corona and make it …
Standard solar physics cannot account for the X-ray emission and other puzzles, the most striking example being the solar corona mystery. The corona temperature rise above the non-flaring magnetized sunspots, while the photosphere just underneath becomes cooler, makes this mystery more intriguing. The paradoxical Sun is suggestive of some sort of exotic solution, axions being the (only?) choice for the missing ingredient. We present atypical axion signatures, which depict solar axions with a rest mass max ~17 meV/c2. Then, the Sun has been for decades the overlooked harbinger of new particle p…
The goal of this paper is to understand the drivers, configurations, and scenarios of two similar eruptive events, which occurred in the same solar active region 9973 on 2002 June 1 and 2. The June 2 event was previously studied by Sui, Holman, and Dennis (2006, 2008), who concluded that it was challenging for popular flare models. Using multi-spectral data, we analyze a combination of the two events. Each of the events exhibited an evolving cusp-like feature. We have revealed that these apparent ``cusps'' were most likely mimicked by twisted magnetic flux ropes, but unlikely to be related to …
The Parker Solar Probe (PSP) has observed copious rapid magnetic field direction changes in the near-Sun solar wind. These features have been called "switchbacks," and their origin is a mystery. But their widespread nature suggests that they may be generated by a frequently occurring process in the Sun's atmosphere. We examine the possibility that the switchbacks originate from coronal jets. Recent work suggests that many coronal jets result when photospheric magnetic flux cancels, and forms a small-scale "minifilament" flux rope that erupts and reconnects with coronal field. We argue that the…
Magnetism defines the complex and dynamic solar corona. Twists and tangles in coronal magnetic fields build up energy and ultimately erupt, hurling plasma into interplanetary space. These coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are transient riders on the ever-outflowing solar wind, which itself possesses a three-dimensional morphology shaped by the global coronal magnetic field. Coronal magnetism is thus at the heart of any understanding of the origins of space weather at the Earth. However, we have historically been limited by the difficulty of directly measuring the magnetic fields of the corona, and…
The Sun's corona is millions of degrees hotter than its 5,000 K photosphere. This heating enigma is typically addressed by invoking the deposition at coronal heights of non-thermal energy generated by the interplay between convection and magnetic field near the photosphere. However, it remains unclear how and where coronal heating occurs and how the corona is filled with hot plasma. We show that energy deposition at coronal heights cannot be the only source of coronal heating, by revealing a significant coronal mass supply mechanism that is driven from below, in the chromosphere. We quantify t…
``EIT waves" are large-scale coronal bright fronts (CBFs) that were first observed in 195 Å images obtained using the Extreme-ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (EIT) onboard the \emph{Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO)}. Commonly called ``EIT waves", CBFs typically appear as diffuse fronts that propagate pseudo-radially across the solar disk at velocities of 100--700 km s$^{-1}$ with front widths of 50-100 Mm. As their speed is greater than the quiet coronal sound speed ($c_s\leq$200 km s$^{-1}$) and comparable to the local Alfvén speed ($v_A\leq$1000 km s$^{-1}$), they were initially inter…
The details of the mechanism(s) responsible for the observed heating and dynamics of the solar atmosphere still remain a mystery. Magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) waves are thought to play a vital role in this process. Although it has been shown that incompressible waves are ubiquitous in off-limb solar atmospheric observations their energy cannot be readily dissipated. We provide here, for the first time, on-disk observation and identification of concurrent MHD wave modes, both compressible and incompressible, in the solar chromosphere. The observed ubiquity and estimated energy flux associated with…
Coronal plumes are long, ray-like, open structures, which have been considered as possible sources for the solar wind. Their origin in the largely unipolar coronal holes has long been a mystery. Earlier spectroscopic and imaging observations revealed blue-shifted plasma and propagating disturbances (PDs) in plumes that are widely interpreted in terms of flows and/or propagating slow-mode waves, but these interpretations (flows vs waves) remain under debate. Recently we discovered an important clue about plume internal structure: dynamic filamentary features called plumelets, which account for …
We study a series of X-ray-bright, rapidly-evolving active-region coronal jets outside the leading sunspot of AR 12259, using Hinode/XRT, SDO/AIA and HMI, and IRIS data. The detailed evolution of such rapidly evolving "violent" jets remained a mystery after our previous investigation of active region jets (Sterling et al. 2016, Paper 1). The jets we investigate here erupt from three localized subregions, each containing a rapidly evolving (positive) minority-polarity magnetic-flux patch bathed in a (majority) negative-polarity magnetic-flux background. At least several of the jets begin with e…
Observations revealed rich dynamics within prominences, the cool 10,000 K, macroscopic (sizes of order 100 Mm) "clouds" in the million degree solar corona. Even quiescent prominences are continuously perturbed by hot, rising bubbles. Since prominence matter is hundredfold denser than coronal plasma, this bubbling is related to Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities. Here we report on true macroscopic simulations well into this bubbling phase, adopting a magnetohydrodynamic description from chromospheric layers up to 30 Mm height. Our virtual prominences rapidly establish fully non-linear (magneto)conve…
The steady, supersonic outflow from the Sun we call the solar wind was first posited in the 1950s and initial theories rightly linked the acceleration of the wind to the existence of the million-degree solar corona. Still today, the wind acceleration mechanisms and the coronal heating processes remain unsolved challenges in solar physics. In this work, I seek to answer a portion of the mystery by focusing on a particular acceleration process: Alfven waves launched by the motion of magnetic field footpoints in the photosphere. The entire corona is threaded with magnetic loops and flux tubes tha…
We advocate the idea that there is a fundamentally new mechanism for the axion production in the Sun, which has never been discussed previously in the literature. This novel mechanism of the axion production is based on the so-called Axion Quark Nugget (AQN) Dark Matter Model. These axions will be produced in addition to well studied axions emitted due to the Primakoff effect. The AQN model was originally invented as a natural explanation of the observed ratio $Ω_{\rm dark} \sim Ω_{\rm visible}$ when the DM and visible matter densities assume the same order of magnitude values, irrespectively …
The heating of the outer solar atmospheric layers, i.e., the transition region and corona, to high temperatures is a long standing problem in solar (and stellar) physics. Solutions have been hampered by an incomplete understanding of the magnetically controlled structure of these regions. The high spatial and temporal resolution observations with the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) at the solar limb reveal a plethora of short, low lying loops or loop segments at transition-region temperatures that vary rapidly, on the timescales of minutes. We argue that the existence of these loo…
As recently advocated in \cite{Fischer:2018niu}, there is a fundamentally new mechanism for the axion production in the Sun and Earth. However, the role of very slow axions in previous studies were neglected because of its negligible contribution to the total axion production by this new mechanism. In the present work we specifically focus on analysis of the non-relativistic axions which will be trapped by the Sun and Earth due to the gravitational forces. The corresponding emission rate of these low energy axions (below the escape velocity) is very tiny. However, these axions will be accumula…
Popular scientific summary -- The atmosphere of the Sun is envisioned as composed of inherently complex, non-homogeneous, and dynamic layers. A detailed understanding of the physical processes involved in these layers is still lacking. For example, it is largely unknown why the outermost layer of the Sun's atmosphere (the solar corona) is so much hotter than the photosphere by millions of degrees. Astrophysicists think that the layer sandwiched between the photosphere and the corona, known as the interface region, may hold the key to a better understanding of the nature of this enigma. With th…
Recently, two strong homologous white light flares of X-GOES class occurred on the Sun on Sept. 06, 2017, providing a rare exceptional opportunity to study the mechanisms responsible for the formation of the magnetic field configurations suitable for the manifestation of such yet enigmatic eruptive events and their effects in the lower layers of the solar atmosphere. Using photospheric vector magnetograms, taken before the beginning of the two X-class events, as boundary conditions to reconstruct the non$-$linear coronal magnetic field configuration, we identified two related 3D null points lo…
There is a thin transition region (TR) in the solar atmosphere where the temperature rises from 10,000 K in the chromosphere to millions of degrees in the corona. Little is known about the mechanisms that dominate this enigmatic region other than the magnetic field plays a key role. The magnetism of the TR can only be detected by polarimetric measurements of a few ultraviolet (UV) spectral lines, the Lyman-$α$ line of neutral hydrogen at 121.6 nm (the strongest line of the solar UV spectrum) being of particular interest given its sensitivity to the Hanle effect (the magnetic-field-induced modi…
How the solar corona is heated to high temperatures remains an unsolved mystery in solar physics. In the present study we analyse observations of 50 whole active-region loops taken with the Extreme-ultraviolet Imaging Spectrometer (EIS) on board the Hinode satellite. Eleven loops were classified as cool (<1 MK) and 39 as warm (1-2 MK) loops. We study their plasma parameters such as densities, temperatures, filling factors, non-thermal velocities and Doppler velocities. We combine spectroscopic analysis with linear force-free magnetic-field extrapolation to derive the three-dimensional structur…
Magnetic fields are ubiquitous in the Universe. The Sun's magnetic field drives the solar wind and causes solar flares and other energetic surface phenomena that profoundly affect space weather here on Earth. The first magnetic field in a star other than the Sun was detected in 1947 in the peculiar A-type star 78 Vir. It is now known that the magnetic fields of the Sun and other low-mass stars (<1.5 solar masses) are generated in-situ by a dynamo process in their turbulent, convective envelopes. Unlike such stars, intermediate-mass and high-mass stars (>1.5 solar masses; referred to as "massiv…
We have studied the element abundances and energy spectra of the small "He-poor" impulsive solar energetic-particle (SEP) events, comparing them with other impulsive SEP events with more-normal abundances of He. He-poor events can have abundances as low as He/O ~ 2, while both impulsive and gradual SEP events usually have source abundances of 30 < He/O < 100 with mean values of 50 - 60. He/C ratios are not only low, but often decrease with energy in He-poor events. Abundance enhancement patterns of other elements with atomic numbers 6 < Z < 56, and likely values of their mass-to-charge ratios …
