KU Leuven researchers find vibration on the sun

The Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) telescope aboard the Solar Orbiter satellite was able to film magnetic loops that jittered very quickly. These vibrations are very small, but they are omnipresent and always present. The researchers of the KU Leuven Center for mathematical Plasma-Astrophysics , suspect that it is these movements that heat the environment around the sun to millions of degrees Celsius. In comparison, the solar surface is only a few thousand degrees warm.

The sun is littered with magnetic loops. Now it turns out that these loops fluctuate continuously and very quickly. Part of the energy of the vibrations is transferred to the environment causing it to heat up. This could explain the mystery of the solar atmosphere being so much hotter than the solar surface. You would expect these vibrations to stop after a while, but nothing could be further from the truth. The loops are driven continuously.

Scientists at the KU Leuven Center for mathematical Plasma-Astrophysics suspect that the swirling solar mass, from which the loops emerge, makes them vibrate. This needs to be further investigated. This discovery was only possible thanks to the EUI telescope, which can take extremely sharp images in rapid succession. Other comparable solar telescopes cannot do this: either they are slower or the images are less sharp.