Mystery of Sun's Outer Atmosphere Solved 56
xp65 writes "For decades, scientists have puzzled over the mystery of why temperatures in the solar corona, the sun's outer atmosphere, soar to several million Kelvin (K) — much hotter than temperatures nearer the sun's surface. New observations made with instruments aboard Japan's Hinode satellite reveal the culprit to be nanoflares. Nanoflares are small, sudden bursts of heat and energy. 'They occur within tiny strands that are bundled together to form a magnetic tube called a coronal loop,' says astrophysicist James Klimchuk. Coronal loops are the fundamental building blocks of the thin, translucent gas known as the sun's corona. The discovery that nanoflares play an important and perhaps dominant role in coronal heating paves the way to understanding how the sun affects Earth and its atmosphere."
They need to change their logo! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:alternative (Score:3, Insightful)
Your comment was marked flamebait because with the article's wording "The discovery that nanoflares play an important and perhaps dominant role in coronal heating paves the way to understanding how the sun affects Earth and its atmosphere" along with your mocking the global warming zealots attempts of banning all things that don't fit their world hit too close to home.
The science is settled BTW, we already know all there is to know about how the sun warms the Earth and what causes global warming. Any information contrary to what is currently known and pushing the agenda is psudosciense and any semi-intelligent comment will be modded down by the Global Warming trolls. This is slashdot, what do you expect when science rules only when it agrees with their point of view.
Re:alternative (Score:2, Insightful)
I think you don't know what I know. The comment was a bashing on the mods who modded you down, not an attack on you.
The zealots say the science is settled, that it's a fact and undeniable, the article says this discovery paves the way to understanding how the sun affects Earth and its atmosphere, You comment joked about their attempts to ban everything that's detrimental to the earth as they know it (or at least that's how it is perceived), that is why you were modded Flamebait.
The point I was making is that given all the relevant data, you comment intruded on their religion and it seems to be one of the only ones accepted here so you were modded down for making an obvious joke.
Mystery NOT solved (Score:3, Insightful)
The "explanation" shifts the blame to "nanoflares". Why? Well, because "These temperatures can only be produced by impulsive energy bursts". But just because that is the only mechanism James Klimchuk can think of does not mean that there is no other mechanism. Indeed, anomalous extreme temperatures have been observed in coronal-alike plasmas under laboratory conditions: http://arxiv.org/ftp/physics/papers/0509/0509127.pdf [arxiv.org]. No "nanoflares" in that 0.4 Torr Pyrex cylinder.
This is typical overconfidence in theory. The reasoning is: nature must obey our currently accepted theories, and within the context of those theories I see only one possible cause, so that must be it. Such hubris. The accepted theories are likely to be incomplete, and might be downright wrong in places.
Then there is the title of the post: "Mystery of Sun's Outer Atmosphere Solved" Finely tuned to plant the mistaken belief in the mind of the Slashdot crowd that it has been figured out. Nothing more to see here. Please move along. After all, we don't want people to get a clue as to what is actually producing all that energy needed to keep the corona piping hot, do we?
Re:Nice outdated explanation (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)