Lunar orbiter recorded many mysterious flares on the Sun: what is known (photo)

Scientists have created a more comprehensive catalog of mysterious, slow-moving and extremely hot explosions on the Sun, according to a study published in the journal Solar Physics. Space writes that the results show that a significant number of these strange flares, first discovered in the 1980s, require deeper investigation.

In Focus. Technologies emerged telegram channel. Subscribe to avoid missing the latest and most exciting news from the world of science!

Solar flares are bursts of energy that occur when the sun’s magnetic field lines become tangled, broken, and then reconnected into sunspots.

Solar flares, which last from a few minutes to several hours, are generally classified by the amount of energy emitted. But new research distinguishes solar flares by the rate at which their energy actually accumulates, and shows that many solar flares do not release energy as quickly as standard models indicate.

Scientists using the Chandrayaan-2 lunar orbiter detected 1,400 slow-growing flares over three years, significantly expanding the flare catalog that previously consisted of 100 such events.

Since the beginning of the 21st century, scientists have believed that most solar flares gain power rapidly and then gradually lose energy. But the study’s authors show that not all solar flares behave this way.

Past research overlooked slower-growing, super-hot flares, so models only accounted for faster-growing flares, the scientists said. It turns out that there are explosions on the Sun that grow much slower than thought. In fact, they account for 25% of such explosions. Therefore, scientists say they should be studied separately from others, although their nature remains largely a mystery.

Slow-growing eruptions create some mystery because the magnetic reconnection process believed to create different types of solar flares occurs quickly, resulting in a rapid release of energy.

The study’s authors say we need to better understand exactly how slow-growing eruptions occur, how they propagate through the sun’s outer atmosphere, and whether this mechanism could lead to slower onset of eruptions.

Perhaps the secret behind these mysterious flares is that they are very hot. Rapidly growing outbreaks have temperatures of 10 million degrees Celsius. Slow-growing epidemics can reach up to 54 million degrees Celsius.

Scientists have also found that there is no intermediate energy phenomenon between the two types of solar flares. There must be a reason why only these two types of solar flares occur.

Solving the mystery of slow-growing solar flares could help scientists solve another mystery: Why the Sun’s outer atmosphere is hotter than the star’s surface, even though the former is much farther away from the heat source in the core, scientists say.

As I already wrote FocusA powerful explosion on the Sun caused radio communications to fail on part of the Earth. A huge stream of plasma flew into space during a solar flare, and it was captured by a NASA spacecraft.