{"id":234761,"date":"2026-04-07T18:03:30","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T23:03:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/physicists-trace-the-suns-magnetic-engine-200000-kilometers-below-its-surface"},"modified":"2026-04-07T18:03:30","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T23:03:30","slug":"physicists-trace-the-suns-magnetic-engine-200000-kilometers-below-its-surface","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/physicists-trace-the-suns-magnetic-engine-200000-kilometers-below-its-surface","title":{"rendered":"Physicists trace the sun\u2019s magnetic engine, 200,000 kilometers below its surface"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/physicists-trace-the-suns-magnetic-engine-200000-kilometers-below-its-surface2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Every eleven years, the sun\u2019s magnetic field flips. Sunspots\u2014dark, cooler regions on the sun\u2019s surface that mark intense magnetic activity and often trigger solar eruptions\u2014appear at mid-latitudes and migrate toward the star\u2019s equator in a butterfly-shape pattern before fading as the cycle resets. While this spectacle on the star\u2019s surface has long been visible to astronomers, where this powerful cycle begins inside the star has remained hidden until now.<\/p>\n<p>Researchers at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) have analyzed nearly three decades of solar oscillation data to trace the sun\u2019s interior dynamics, and have now pointed to the likely location of the star\u2019s magnetic engine deep beneath its surface: roughly 200,000 kilometers down, about the length of stacking 16 Earths end to end.<\/p>\n<p>The findings, published in Scientific Reports, provide one of the clearest observational windows yet into the sun\u2019s magnetic engine\u2014the solar dynamo\u2014shedding light on hidden forces shaping space weather patterns linked to the solar cycle, not only on Earth\u2019s nearest star, but potentially on other stars across the galaxy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Every eleven years, the sun\u2019s magnetic field flips. Sunspots\u2014dark, cooler regions on the sun\u2019s surface that mark intense magnetic activity and often trigger solar eruptions\u2014appear at mid-latitudes and migrate toward the star\u2019s equator in a butterfly-shape pattern before fading as the cycle resets. While this spectacle on the star\u2019s surface has long been visible to [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":707,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[219,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-234761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-physics","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234761","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\/707"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234761"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234761\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}