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Mysterious Solar Plasma Jets Explained

Posted on: Friday, 30 July 2004, 06:00 CDT

U.S. and British physicists think they have found the explanation for the sun's mysterious plasma jets.

Physicists at Lockheed Martin and the University of Sheffield used computer modeling and high-resolution images to explain the cause of supersonic jets, which shoot continuously through the low solar atmosphere.

The jets, called spicules, shoot into the atmosphere at about 50,000 miles per hour, and reach heights of 3,000 miles above the solar surface in less than five minutes. Although there are over 100,000 spicules at any time in the sun's low atmosphere, they remain largely unexplained, in part because they have very brief lifetimes and are relatively small -- about 300 miles diameter.

The images showed the jets often occur every five minutes or so, at the same location.

We developed a computer model of the sun's atmosphere to show that the periodicity of the spicules is caused by sound waves at the solar surface that have the same five minute period, the team said.

The findings could lead to a better understanding of how matter is propelled upward into the solar corona to form the solar wind, a stream of particles continuously emitted by the Sun that sweeps past Earth's orbit. Disturbances in the solar wind can influence the upper atmosphere and space environment around the Earth and damage satellites in orbit.

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