{"id":123170,"date":"2021-05-29T15:22:17","date_gmt":"2021-05-29T22:22:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/05\/scientists-solve-an-80-year-old-paradox-about-the-sun"},"modified":"2021-05-29T15:22:17","modified_gmt":"2021-05-29T22:22:17","slug":"scientists-solve-an-80-year-old-paradox-about-the-sun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/05\/scientists-solve-an-80-year-old-paradox-about-the-sun","title":{"rendered":"Scientists solve an 80-year-old paradox about the Sun"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/RkUqX1TkiZo?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Everything is weird on the Sun, where things are not where you\u2019d expect.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>This spike in temperature, despite the increased distance from the Sun\u2019s main energy source, has been observed in most stars and represents a <a class href=\"https:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/news-articles\/the-mystery-of-coronal-heating\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\">fundamental puzzle<\/a> that astrophysicists have mulled over for decades.<\/p>\n<p>In 1942, the Swedish scientist Hannes Alfv\u00e9n <a class href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/150405d0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\">proposed an explanation<\/a>. He theorized that magnetized waves of plasma could carry huge amounts of energy along the <a class href=\"https:\/\/www.inverse.com\/science\/solar-minimum-explained\">Sun\u2019s magnetic field<\/a> from its interior to the corona, bypassing the photosphere before exploding with heat in the Sun\u2019s upper atmosphere.<\/p>\n<p>The theory had been tentatively accepted \u2014 but we still needed proof, in the form of empirical observation, that these waves existed. <a class href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41550-021-01354-8\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\">Our recent study<\/a> has finally achieved this, validating Alfv\u00e9n\u2019s 80-year-old theory and taking us a step closer to harnessing this high-energy phenomenon here on Earth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Everything is weird on the Sun, where things are not where you\u2019d expect. This spike in temperature, despite the increased distance from the Sun\u2019s main energy source, has been observed in most stars and represents a fundamental puzzle that astrophysicists have mulled over for decades. In 1942, the Swedish scientist Hannes Alfv\u00e9n proposed an explanation. [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":631,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1497,219,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-123170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy","category-physics","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/631"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123170\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}