The Solar Orbiter discovered tiny jets from the Sun, potentially explaining the solar wind’s origin. This challenges traditional beliefs about the wind’s generation, with the new data suggesting an intermittent outflow. The findings could also have implications for understanding other stars’ atmospheres. Credit: ESA & NASA/Solar Orbiter/EUI Team; acknowledgment: Lakshmi Pradeep Chitta, Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research
The ESA/<span class=”glossaryLink” aria-describedby=”tt” data-cmtooltip=”
NASA
Established in 1958, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is an independent agency of the United States Federal Government that succeeded the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). It is responsible for the civilian space program, as well as aeronautics and aerospace research. Its vision is "To discover and expand knowledge for the benefit of humanity." Its core values are "safety, integrity, teamwork, excellence, and inclusion." NASA conducts research, develops technology and launches missions to explore and study Earth, the solar system, and the universe beyond. It also works to advance the state of knowledge in a wide range of scientific fields, including Earth and space science, planetary science, astrophysics, and heliophysics, and it collaborates with private companies and international partners to achieve its goals.
” data-gt-translate-attributes=”[“attribute”:”data-cmtooltip”, “format”:”html”]”>NASA Solar Orbiter spacecraft has discovered a multitude of tiny jets of material escaping from the Sun’s outer atmosphere. Each jet lasts between 20 and 100 seconds, and expels <span class=”glossaryLink” aria-describedby=”tt” data-cmtooltip=”
plasma
Plasma is one of the four fundamental states of matter, along with solid, liquid, and gas. It is an ionized gas consisting of positive ions and free electrons. It was first described by chemist Irving Langmuir in the 1920s.
” data-gt-translate-attributes=”[“attribute”:”data-cmtooltip”, “format”:”html”]”>plasma at around 100 km/s (60 miles/s) or 360,000 km/h (220,000 mph). These jets could be the long-sought-after source of the solar wind.
Understanding the Solar Wind
The solar wind is composed of charged particles, known as plasma, that continuously escape the Sun. It propagates outwards through interplanetary space, colliding with anything in its path. When the solar wind collides with Earth’s magnetic field, it produces the aurorae.
Although the solar wind is a fundamental feature of the Sun, understanding how and where it is generated near the Sun has proven elusive and has been a key focus of study for decades. Now, thanks to its superior instrumentation, Solar Orbiter has taken us an important step closer.
This mosaic of images shows a multitude of tiny jets of material escaping from the Sun’s outer atmosphere. The images come from the ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter spacecraft. They show up as dark streaks across the solar surface in this mosaic. The images are ‘negatives’ meaning that although the jets are displayed as dark, they are bright flashes against the solar surface. Credit: ESA & NASA/Solar Orbiter/EUI Team; acknowledgment: Lakshmi Pradeep Chitta, Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
High-resolution Imaging of the Sun’s Surface
The data comes from Solar Orbiter’s Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) instrument. Images of the Sun’s south pole taken by EUI on March 30, 2022, reveal a population of faint, short-lived features that are associated with small jets of plasma being ejected from the Sun’s atmosphere.
“We could only detect these tiny jets because of the unprecedented high-resolution, high-cadence images produced by EUI,” says Lakshmi Pradeep Chitta, Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Germany, and the principal author on the paper describing this work. In particular, the images were taken in the extreme ultraviolet channel of EUI’s high resolution imager, which observes million-degree solar plasma at a wavelength of 17.4 nanometers.
Of particular importance is the fact that analysis shows that these features are caused by the expulsion of plasma from the solar atmosphere.
[embedded content] This movie was created from observations taken by the ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter spacecraft on March 30, 2022, between 04:30 and 04:55 <span class=”glossaryLink” aria-describedby=”tt” data-cmtooltip=”
UTC
Coordinated Universal Time or Universal Time Coordinated (UTC) is the primary time standard by which the world regulates clocks and time. Prior to 1972, this time was called Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) and is also known as "Z time" or "Zulu Time." It is, within about 1 second, mean solar time at 0° longitude.
” data-gt-translate-attributes=”[“attribute”:”data-cmtooltip”, “format”:”html”]”>UTC, and was previously released last year. It shows a ‘coronal hole’ near the Sun’s south pole. Subsequent analysis revealed many tiny jets being released during the observation. They show up as little flashes of bright light across the image. Each one expels charged particles, known as plasma, into space. The circle indicates the size of the Earth for scale. Credit: ESA & NASA/Solar Orbiter/EUI Team; acknowledgment: Lakshmi Pradeep Chitta, Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research
Magnetic Structures and the Solar Wind
Researchers have known for decades that a significant fraction of the solar wind is associated with magnetic structures called coronal holes – regions where the Sun’s magnetic field does not turn back down into the Sun. Instead, the magnetic field stretches deep into the Solar System.
Plasma can flow along these ‘open’ magnetic field lines, heading into the Solar System, creating the solar wind. But the question was: how did the plasma get launched?
The traditional assumption was that because the corona is hot, it will naturally expand and a portion of it will escape along the field lines. But these new results look into the coronal hole that was situated at the Sun’s south pole, and the individual jets that were revealed challenge the assumption that the solar wind is produced only in a steady continuous flow.
“One of the results here is that to a large extent, this flow is not actually uniform, the ubiquity of the jets suggests that the solar wind from coronal holes might originate as a highly intermittent outflow,” says Andrei Zhukov, Royal Observatory of Belgium, a collaborator on the work who led the Solar Orbiter observing campaign.
ESA’s Solar Orbiter mission will face the Sun from within the orbit of Mercury at its closest approach. Credit: ESA/ATG medialab
Energy Analysis of the Jets
The energy associated with each individual jet is small. At the top end of coronal phenomena are the X-class solar flares, and at the lower end are the so-called nanoflares. There is a billion times more energy in an X-flare than in a nanoflare. The tiny jets discovered by Solar Orbiter are even less energetic than that, manifesting around a thousand times less energy than a nanoflare, and channelling most of that energy into the expulsion of the plasma.
The ubiquity of them implied by the new observations suggests that they are expelling a substantial fraction of the material we see in the solar wind. And there could be even smaller, more frequent events providing yet more.
“I think it’s a significant step to find something on the disc that certainly is contributing to the solar wind,” says David Berghmans, Royal Observatory of Belgium, and principal investigator for the EUI instrument.
Future Observations and Broader Implications
Currently, Solar Orbiter is still circling the Sun close to its equator. So in these observations, EUI is looking across the south pole at a grazing angle.
“It’s harder to measure some of the properties of these tiny jets when seeing them edge-on, but in a few years, we will see them from a different perspective than any other telescopes or observatories so that together should help a lot,” says Daniel Müller, ESA Project Scientist for Solar Orbiter.
That is because as the mission continues, the spacecraft will gradually incline its orbit towards the polar regions. At the same time, the activity on the Sun will progress through the solar cycle and the coronal holes will begin popping up at many different latitudes, providing a unique new perspective.
All involved will be eager to see what fresh insights they can collect because this work extends further than our own Solar System.
The Sun is the only star whose atmosphere we can observe in such detail, but it is likely that the same process operates on other stars too. That turns these observations into the discovery of a fundamental astrophysical process.
Reference: “Picoflare jets power the solar wind emerging from a coronal hole on the Sun” by L. P. Chitta, A. N. Zhukov, D. Berghmans, H. Peter, S. Parenti, S. Mandal, R. Aznar Cuadrado, U. Schühle, L. Teriaca, F. Auchère, K. Barczynski, É. Buchlin, L. Harra, E. Kraaikamp, D. M. Long, L. Rodriguez, C. Schwanitz, P. J. Smith, C. Verbeeck and D. B. Seaton, 24 August 2023, Science. DOI: 10.1126/science.ade5801
Solar Orbiter is a space mission of international collaboration between ESA and NASA, operated by ESA.
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The body of Ugandan Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei — who died after being set on fire by her partner in Kenya — was received Friday by family and anti-femicide crusaders, ahead of her burial a day later.
Cheptegei’s family met with dozens of activists Friday who had marched to the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital’s morgue in the western city of Eldoret while chanting anti-femicide slogans.
She is the fourth female athlete to have been killed by her partner in Kenya in yet another case of gender-based violence in recent years.
Viola Cheptoo, the founder of Tirop Angels – an organization that was formed in honor of athlete Agnes Tirop, who was stabbed to death in 2021, said stakeholders need to ensure this is the last death of an athlete due to gender-based violence.
“We are here to say that enough is enough, we are tired of burying our sisters due to GBV,” she said.
It was a somber mood at the morgue as athletes and family members viewed Cheptegei’s body which sustained 80% of burns after she was doused with gasoline by her partner Dickson Ndiema. Ndiema sustained 30% burns on his body and later succumbed.
Ndiema and Cheptegei were said to have quarreled over a piece of land that the athlete bought in Kenya, according to a report filed by the local chief.
Cheptegei competed in the women’s marathon at the Paris Olympics less than a month before the attack. She finished in 44th place.
Cheptegei’s father, Joseph, said that the body will make a brief stop at their home in the Endebess area before proceeding to Bukwo in eastern Uganda for a night vigil and burial on Saturday.
“We are in the final part of giving my daughter the last respect,” a visibly distraught Joseph said.
He told reporters last week that Ndiema was stalking and threatening Cheptegei and the family had informed police.
Four in 10 women or an estimated 41% of dating or married Kenyan women have experienced physical or sexual violence perpetrated by their current or most recent partner, according to the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey 2022.
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A rare Bronze-Era jar accidentally smashed by a 4-year-old visiting a museum was back on display Wednesday after restoration experts were able to carefully piece the artifact back together.
Last month, a family from northern Israel was visiting the museum when their youngest son tipped over the jar, which smashed into pieces.
Alex Geller, the boy’s father, said his son — the youngest of three — is exceptionally curious, and that the moment he heard the crash, “please let that not be my child” was the first thought that raced through his head.
The jar has been on display at the Hecht Museum in Haifa for 35 years. It was one of the only containers of its size and from that period still complete when it was discovered.
The Bronze Age jar is one of many artifacts exhibited out in the open, part of the Hecht Museum’s vision of letting visitors explore history without glass barriers, said Inbal Rivlin, the director of the museum, which is associated with Haifa University in northern Israel.
It was likely used to hold wine or oil, and dates back to between 2200 and 1500 B.C.
Rivlin and the museum decided to turn the moment, which captured international attention, into a teaching moment, inviting the Geller family back for a special visit and hands-on activity to illustrate the restoration process.
Rivlin added that the incident provided a welcome distraction from the ongoing war in Gaza. “Well, he’s just a kid. So I think that somehow it touches the heart of the people in Israel and around the world,“ said Rivlin.
Roee Shafir, a restoration expert at the museum, said the repairs would be fairly simple, as the pieces were from a single, complete jar. Archaeologists often face the more daunting task of sifting through piles of shards from multiple objects and trying to piece them together.
Experts used 3D technology, hi-resolution videos, and special glue to painstakingly reconstruct the large jar.
Less than two weeks after it broke, the jar went back on display at the museum. The gluing process left small hairline cracks, and a few pieces are missing, but the jar’s impressive size remains.
The only noticeable difference in the exhibit was a new sign reading “please don’t touch.”
VICTORIA – The British Columbia government is partnering with a bear welfare group to reduce the number of bears being euthanized in the province.
Nicholas Scapillati, executive director of Grizzly Bear Foundation, said Monday that it comes after months-long discussions with the province on how to protect bears, with the goal to give the animals a “better and second chance at life in the wild.”
Scapillati said what’s exciting about the project is that the government is open to working with outside experts and the public.
“So, they’ll be working through Indigenous knowledge and scientific understanding, bringing in the latest techniques and training expertise from leading experts,” he said in an interview.
B.C. government data show conservation officers destroyed 603 black bears and 23 grizzly bears in 2023, while 154 black bears were killed by officers in the first six months of this year.
Scapillati said the group will publish a report with recommendations by next spring, while an independent oversight committee will be set up to review all bear encounters with conservation officers to provide advice to the government.
Environment Minister George Heyman said in a statement that they are looking for new ways to ensure conservation officers “have the trust of the communities they serve,” and the panel will make recommendations to enhance officer training and improve policies.
Lesley Fox, with the wildlife protection group The Fur-Bearers, said they’ve been calling for such a committee for decades.
“This move demonstrates the government is listening,” said Fox. “I suspect, because of the impending election, their listening skills are potentially a little sharper than they normally are.”
Fox said the partnership came from “a place of long frustration” as provincial conservation officers kill more than 500 black bears every year on average, and the public is “no longer tolerating this kind of approach.”
“I think that the conservation officer service and the B.C. government are aware they need to change, and certainly the public has been asking for it,” said Fox.
Fox said there’s a lot of optimism about the new partnership, but, as with any government, there will likely be a lot of red tape to get through.
“I think speed is going to be important, whether or not the committee has the ability to make change and make change relatively quickly without having to study an issue to death, ” said Fox.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 9, 2024.
