Images from NJIT`s Big Bear Solar Observatory Peel Away Layers of a Solar Mystery
(WorldNews Politics)

An international team of scientists, including three researchers from New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), has shed new light on one of the central mysteries of solar physics: how energy from the Sun is transferred to the star`s upper atmosphere, heating it to 1 million degrees Fahrenheit and even hotter in some regions. With new images from NJIT`s Big Bear Solar Observatory (BBSO), the researchers have revealed in groundbreaking, granular detail what appears to be a likely mechanism - jets of magnetized plasma known as spicules that spurt like geysers from the Sun`s chromosphere into the corona. In a paper published today in the journal Science, the...