Coldest region of the sun holds key to heating its million-degree corona, study reveals.
Scientists have discovered intense wave energy from a cool, dark, and strongly magnetized plasma region on the sun, capable of traversing the solar atmosphere and maintaining temperatures of a million degrees Kelvin inside the corona. The discovery was made using the 1.6-meter Goode Solar Telescope at Big Bear Solar Observatory. The finding is the latest key to unraveling a host of related mysteries pertaining to Earth's nearest star, including the coronal heating problem, which has existed for nearly a century.