Wednesday, February 01, 2012

This is cool

OK, relatively cool.

The idea is that a relatively cool spot can form molecular hydrogen on the Sun (most of it is atomic: not bound in a molecule). That reduces the pressure of the plasma locally, which pulls the magnetic fields tighter. It doesn't take much--they estimate only a few percent combining could cause significant intensification of the solar field in the vicinity of the sunspot.

They couldn't search directly for H2 ion spectral lines, so they used OH ions as a stand-in. If the model holds up and we can get some more experimental verification, that helps solve a long-standing mystery: why do these cool regions (only 5700 degrees K) have strong magnetic fields?

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