Our Sun is incredibly hot, and not in a way that would leave you drooling. Reaching temperatures of around 15 million degrees Celsius (27 million degrees Fahrenheit) at its core, our star is obviously no potential candidate for anyone’s future travel destination. The Sun is unbearably hot at its surface as well, as temperatures reach 5,500 degrees Celsius (9,932 degrees Fahrenheit).
You got the main idea: the Sun is scorching hot regardless of the area. Even so, scientists are far from uncovering all of the secrets that our star harbors.
The Parker Solar Probe mission has made a significant discovery about the source of the solar wind, meaning a stream of energized particles from the outer atmosphere of our Sun. CNN brings details. As the spacecraft approached within 13 million miles of the Sun, it detected fine structures of the solar wind near the surface and captured transient details that vanish once the wind is released from the corona.
James Drake, a co-author of the new research, explained as CNN quotes:
Winds carry lots of information from the sun to Earth, so understanding the mechanism behind the sun’s wind is important for practical reasons on Earth,
That’s going to affect our ability to understand how the sun releases energy and drives geomagnetic storms, which are a threat to our communication networks.
The mission in question aims to unravel how the wind forms and escapes the Sun’s gravity. The solar wind plays a crucial role in space weather, and understanding its source can enhance the human ability to predict solar storms and their impact on Earth’s satellites and electrical grids.
One of the incredible facts about the Sun is that it accounts for roughly 99.86% of the total mass of our solar system. This means that almost all the mass in our solar system is concentrated within the Sun, while the remaining 0.14% is distributed among all the planets, moons, asteroids, and other celestial objects combined.
The new research was published in the journal Nature.
