The international spacecraft Hinode, launched last year and currently in orbit around the earth, is sending back images that both solve old questions about the sun and raise new ones. The X-ray data sent back by the satellite support scientists’ predictions about why the sun’s corona is hotter than its surface: magnetic fields surrounding the sun are so battered about that they literally break, releasing huge amounts of energy. At the same time, the satellite is sending back images, such as the collapse of a magnetic arc, that raise perplexing new questions. Magnetic arcs normally expand outward, not inward. “Nobody can explain how this happens,” says Leon Golub, one of the project’s scientists. “Almost every day we see data coming down and we don’t know what they mean.”
Source: Katharine Sanderson, 2007. X-ray snaps of the sun yield surprises. News @ Nature.com, March 22. Photo by NASA.
