Why Is The Sun's Corona Hotter Than It's Surface?

The part that we see, the sun's photosphere, is some 5,800 degrees Kelvin. The solar corona, which extends into space, may be as hot as one million degrees Kelvin. In other words, logic says that the deeper you go into the sun, the cooler it should get!!

The explanation universally accepted without question is that it must be an even hotter mass of hydrogen gas, fusing into helium and other elements at temperatures of 15 million degrees Kelvin in a continuous thermonuclear explosion -- a giant H bomb. This universal view is based on the mathematical work of Arthur Eddington in the 1930s and Hans Bethe's theoretical confirmation in the 1950s (for which he won the Nobel prize in 1967).

But when gases are compressed, as under gravity, they also heat up, and this makes them expand. As temperature increases, the outward force due to expansion will become greater than the force of gravity compressing the gas, and the gas will simply dissipate in space again. How then could the condensing hydrogen cloud ever ignite spontaneously to produce the chain reaction required to power up the sun?

Is the vastly hotter corona due to friction? Viscosity? Heck! I'm no scientist. Just a plain layman. So can anyone answer why the corona is hotter?

Phew! It's gettin' pretty hot in here. The climate control has gone bust! Headin' for the bar for a chilled beer!

Cheers!

Sun is just electron with external charge with lorenz force and his jonosfere is on different freq. I m sure inside sun is nace metal ball with quit and weather.

Coronal mass ejections? Interesting question, gonna read bout it.

On a tangent, interesting point - The light from the sun takes a minimun of 4,000 years (and 8 mins!) to get to the earth.

At least 4k to get from the core to the surface, then the extra 8 mins to go the rest of the way!
Interesting!
some variations on this severial hundreds of tho years!

The Sun is cooler underneath its surface, and is not the raging nuclear fusion furnace that science teaches us.

Sunspots are an electrical phenomina, where the suns surface partially reveals whats hidden beneath the inferno at the surface.

This video explains it very well, in my first thread : www.abovetopsecret.com...

There is nice weather inside sun and solid place. If you bypass corona winds you can enjoy this huge planet. Gravity is less than on earth.

Picture tell much more:
picture

Why is a matches flame hotter at the top then through the middle of the flame itself....

simple science, same applies to any heat emission source. Whether a sun or a single matchstick.
'
It has to do with the acceleration of particles. They can not start at their terminal speed, so as in the example of the matchstick when the naterial is excited to the point of thermal convergance, it sheds energy in the light spectrum ie the visible "flame" and escapes from the remaining solid component, some as gases vapor some as energtic kenetic particles that accelerate to lightspeed. At their terminal velocity they are the "hottest" as they are in the highest excited state for the partical, it is here that the Alpha, beta, and gamma particles seperate in the coronal layer (the sun) these particles then interact with escaping gases and near space gases near the sun causing the coronal aura which we can then pick up via IR and visible light differences.

Originally posted by robertfenix
Why is a matches flame hotter at the top then through the middle of the flame itself....

simple science, same applies to any heat emission source. Whether a sun or a single matchstick.
'
It has to do with the acceleration of particles. They can not start at their terminal speed, so as in the example of the matchstick when the naterial is excited to the point of thermal convergance, it sheds energy in the light spectrum ie the visible "flame" and escapes from the remaining solid component, some as gases vapor some as energtic kenetic particles that accelerate to lightspeed. At their terminal velocity they are the "hottest" as they are in the highest excited state for the partical, it is here that the Alpha, beta, and gamma particles seperate in the coronal layer (the sun) these particles then interact with escaping gases and near space gases near the sun causing the coronal aura which we can then pick up via IR and visible light differences.

Good analogy! Didn't think of this.

But if there's a thermonuclear reaction going on towards the centre, then the particles escaping this reaction should be ab-initio millions of degrees! But the photosphere is just 5700 degrees K, right?? And then again the corona gets to a million degrees K!! So how do the particles cool off at the photosphere (Surface??) and heat up again?

Now that's a paradox, if ever there was one!!

Cheers!

I tried looking for an answer,but no one knows for sure. There are many theories out there. I liked what this site had to offer though.

The greater than expected viscosity in the corona may help resolve a solar conundrum. The discovery that the Sun's atmosphere is much hotter than its surface seems contrary to the physical law that heat does not flow from a cooler object to a warmer one -- it is like discovering people heating their homes with ice cubes. Solar physicists suspect that magnetic energy produced by the roiling, electrically charged gases on the solar surface is somehow transferred to the corona, heating it.

We thought magnetic energy could be used to heat the corona, but our old theory of a low viscosity corona made the process so inefficient that we could not see how it was done. Our new discovery reveals a high viscosity corona, which means it has a lot of friction. Brakes heat up when used to stop a wheel from turning because their high friction efficiently converts the wheel's motion to heat. If you put oil on the brake, you reduce its friction -- the wheel turns much longer, and the brake never gets very hot. Similarly, a high viscosity corona with a lot of friction can be used to transfer energy and generate heat much more efficiently," said Ofman.

At least seems like a step in the right direction.

Corona is a real mistery - and there is NO definite answer to that question.

Last explanation connect corona to magnetic fields, which are covering entire surface of the Sun.

Contrary to the bright, large magnetic field loops which are linked to the "active regions" during periods of solar maxima, these patches seem to appear and disappear randomly in time scales on the order of 40 hours. Scientists now think that this magnetic carpet is probably a source of the corona's heat.

But once again, no one has any definitive proof of the theory!

imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov...

----------Sorry for doubleposting---------------------

[edit on 17-3-2007 by blue bird]

Maybe there is a better explanation - by theorists of Electric Universe:




"The “Electric Universe” extends the findings of plasma cosmology to the formation and evolution of stars and their planetary satellites.

Proponents of the Electric Universe suggest that there are no isolated islands in the universe. All objects in space, from subatomic particles to galactic clusters, are connected by manifestations of the electric force acting in realtime.

Stars are formed at the intersections of galactic current filaments in dusty space plasma.

It is electricity that continues to energize the stars in a form of glow discharge, our Sun included. This external power source explains why the temperature of the Sun increases above the photosphere, to coronal temperatures of 2 million degrees.

Powerful plasma feedback effects maintain a steady output of visible solar radiation while variations in power input show up in the familiar sunspot cycle. It is in the nature of a glow discharge that all stars possess a weak electric field beyond the corona.

As charged particles of the solar wind move away from the Sun, they continue to be accelerated due to the Sun's electric field."

www.thunderbolts.info...

[edit on 17-3-2007 by blue bird]

Wow blue bird, That was interesting! The electric universe is what I call an out of the box theory. Gotta delve deeper into it.

Cheers!

The corona is a rarefied atmosphere containing highly charged particles driven by the magnetic fields. You also find extremely high temperatures in the ionosphere of the Earth.

Originally posted by mikesingh
Wow blue bird, That was interesting!

The electric universe is what I call an out of the box theory. Gotta delve deeper into it.

Cheers!

Thank's mikesingh!



www.plasmacosmology.net...#

www.holoscience.com...


If we can chew on metaphysical theories like strings, super-strings, quantum loop gravity - sure is reasonable to explore something like electrodynamics nature of the Universe. As, the theorists of Electric Universe are saying all along: gravity ain't only force in Nature ( and btw which is far from explained: is it graviton, or gravity waves, is it instantaneously,or is banding Space and Time....)