Employees of the University of Cambridge (UK), together with colleagues from India and the US for the first time visualized as the fluxes of solar gas heated to millions of degrees, rise in the relative calm of coronal loops.
Loop active regions and (right) the plasma flows, shown in blue (image SDO / AIA (NASA); Hinode / EIS (JAXA, NASA, ESA, STFC).

Thus another step has been taken towards the solution of the reasons of space storms that can disrupt satellite communications and damage the electrical grid on the Earth.

Coronal loops are rooted in the active region of the Sun, is known for its sudden energy. Monitoring the movement of gases will help to address one of the most difficult problems of astrophysics - how of education in the upper layers of the solar atmosphere heated up and supported. This is particularly important, that the next solar maximum will happen sometime in may 2013, that is now.

The data of the satellites "Hinode" (a joint project Japan, UK, EU and USA) have shown that rising plasma travels at a speed of about 20 km/s, entering into the active region. Probably, the thread becomes the "spontaneous heating" near the roots of the loop.

Probably, the gas motion is called the process " chromospheric evaporation", where "spontaneous heating in small scale can lead to heat active areas, and in more broad - severe explosion, that is, solar flash and the coronal mass ejections.

"It is believed that in the active region is accumulated magnetic energy as the magnetic field is distorted, for example, as a result of motion of the material beneath the surface of the Sun, " explains Helen Mason of the University of Cambridge. - Sometimes the magnetic flux rises or immersed, affecting the upper magnetic field. We believe that the solar plasma flies up as a result of spontaneous heating from magnetic reconnection, which occurs either in loops or near the surface of the Sun. These disorders are sometimes quite mild in nature, but can end in a catastrophe."

The study is published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Based on the materials of the University of Cambridge.