14 DAY TRIAL // According to a new report released by NASA solar physicists and experts at the Goddard Space Flight Center, in Greenbelt, Maryland, it would appear that solar nanoflares, much smaller than the ones that can wreak havoc back on Earth, are responsible for the million-degree temperatures recorded in the thin, translucent gas of the sun's atmosphere. Nanoflares are nothing but small, sudden bursts of heat and energy, which heat up the gas tremendously.
The Sun's outer atmosphere is not made up of chemicals similar to our planet's. It rather comprises of loops of hot gas that Arch high above its surface, and which determine the extent of the corona. These arches all contain smaller, individual magnetic “tubes,” and they are heated at millions of degrees Kelvin. This is a bit peculiar, as the Sun's own surface temperature is only about 5,700 degrees Kelvin, which implies that a lot of energy is needed in order to heat the outer layers so significantly.
Inside these magnetic tubes, sudden bursts of intense energy (the nanoflares) constantly appear and influence the temperature levels around their area of origin. The reason why they have been so difficult to discover until now is that orbit- or ground-based telescopes are not yet advanced enough to detect them individually. Rather, only their effects become obvious, when more of them appear at roughly the same time. Their combined effect is strong enough to be picked up and analyzed.
“Coronal loops are the fundamental building blocks of the corona. Their shape is defined by the magnetic field, which guides the hot flowing gases called plasma. The magnetic field is also the source of the nanoflare energy. We believe that stresses in the field are released when thin sheets of electric current become unstable,” James Klimchuk, who is an astrophysicist at the Goddard Space Flight Center, explains the amazing process.
Fortunately, NASA already has plans to investigate this further, with the upcoming launch of the Solar Dynamics Observatory mission. The spacecraft will hopefully be able to get close enough to the Sun to actually image these nanoflares individually. This could offer solar physicists a better understanding of the underlying processes that go on inside the star, as well as in others across the Universe.