Journal
SCIENCE
Volume 331, Issue 6013, Pages 55-58Publisher
AMER ASSOC ADVANCEMENT SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1126/science.1197738
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Funding
- NASA [NNX08AL22G, NNX08BA99G, NNM07AA01C, NNG04EA00C]
- Research Council of Norway
- NSF
- Directorate For Geosciences
- Div Atmospheric & Geospace Sciences [0925177] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
- NASA [NNX08AL22G, 89838, NNX08BA99G, 98896] Funding Source: Federal RePORTER
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Sun's outer atmosphere, or corona, is heated to millions of degrees, considerably hotter than its surface or photosphere. Explanations for this enigma typically invoke the deposition in the corona of nonthermal energy generated by magnetoconvection. However, the coronal heating mechanism remains unknown. We used observations from the Solar Dynamics Observatory and the Hinode solar physics mission to reveal a ubiquitous coronal mass supply in which chromospheric plasma in fountainlike jets or spicules is accelerated upward into the corona, with much of the plasma heated to temperatures between similar to 0.02 and 0.1 million kelvin (MK) and a small but sufficient fraction to temperatures above 1 MK. These observations provide constraints on the coronal heating mechanism(s) and highlight the importance of the interface region between photosphere and corona.
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