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The NCAR/UCAR Media Office has issued the following news release:
Plasma jets are prime suspect in solar mystery
One of the most enduring mysteries in solar physics is why the Sun’s outer atmosphere, or corona, is millions of degrees hotter than its surface. Now scientists believe they have discovered a major source of hot gas that replenishes the corona: narrow jets of plasma, known as spicules, shooting up from just above the Sun’s surface. The finding, detailed in Science this week by Scott McIntosh (HAO), a co-author, addresses a fundamental question in astrophysics: how energy moves from the Sun’s interior to create its hot outer atmosphere.
Read the story in Discovery News.