How Paint And a Speaker Could Explain The Physics of The Sun's Plasma Jets

Scientists have figured out more about how the jets are created and driven up into the atmosphere of the star.

A new study describes the spicules as being like drops of paint bouncing around on the surface of a speaker as music plays. It is an unusual analogy, but the underlying physics seem to be the same.

Liquid above a speaker that is pumping out audio becomes unstable and starts vibrating. If that liquid is made up of long polymer chains, it will be fired away from the speaker in the jets.

The paint is flying because of the vibrations. ey et al., Nature Physics, 2022.

The authors contend that the process could be happening above the Sun. The spicules are caused by the magnetic field generated by electric currents inside the Sun.

We investigated the roles of magnetic fields on the Sun using state-of-the-art numerical simulations of the solar plasma, because of the similarity between the solar spicules and the jets of paint on the speaker.

The magnetic field around the Sun can keep the jets of paint stable enough to shoot in a specific direction away from the star.

Both systems are anisotropic, where the properties of something change depending on the direction that it is traveling in, although the researchers point out that there are significant differences too.

The current consensus is that the physics behind short solar spicules are different from the physics behind long solar spicules. Both could be created by the same forces in the photoosphere.

The solar plasma can be imagined as threaded by magnetic field lines, like the long chains in polymer solutions, says Sahel Dey from the Indian Institute of Astrophysics.

The surface of the Sun is not as hot as the middle of three layers of atmosphere. This discovery could help to explain more than one solar mystery, as scientists think that plasma spicules might be one of the reasons why.

The spicules can shoot up to 12,000 kilometers away from the Sun before being brought back down by gravity, and they can extend to 1,100 kilometers. The experiments and modeling done in this study accounted for the variations in the variety.

There are around 3 million spicules above the Sun at any given time, and research continues into exactly how they are generated. Collaboration between scientists from different fields is needed to get more answers.

The underlying cause of the poorly understood solar spicules was revealed by a novel coming together of solar astronomy and condensed matter experimentalists.

The power of unifying physics that connects physically disparate phenomena will prove to be the driving force of much more interdisciplinary collaboration.

The research has been published.