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Scientists have found that the Sun is emitting the highest-energy light ever observed from our star.
The international team behind the discovery found that this type of light, known as gamma rays, is surprisingly bright. That is, around 1 trillion electron volts, which is more than scientists had previously anticipated.
The discovery was made by Mehr Un Nisa, a postdoctoral research associate at Michigan State University, and her colleagues.
‘The sun is more surprising than we knew,’ said Nisa in a statement. ‘We thought we had this star figured out, but that’s not the case.’
‘After looking at six years’ worth of data, out popped this excess of gamma rays,’
‘When we first saw it, we were like, “We definitely messed this up. The sun cannot be this bright at these energies”,’ she said.
The gamma rays were detected coming from a region of the sun called the solar corona. The corona is the outermost layer of the sun’s atmosphere, where the sun’s magnetic field is strongest.
Researchers believe that the gamma rays are produced when high-energy cosmic rays from space collide with protons in the sun’s corona. The cosmic rays are accelerated by powerful cosmic events, such as supernova explosions.
The findings published in the journal Physical Review Letters suggest that the sun is a much more dynamic and energetic place than we previously thought.
Researchers were able to detect the gamma rays thanks to a unique lens called the High-Altitude Water Cherenkov Observatory, or HAWC. This observatory is specifically designed to observe particles associated with very high-energy gamma rays and cosmic rays.
The first time scientists observed gamma rays with energies of more than a billion electron volts, according to the release, was in 2011 with Nasa’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. But Fermi had a limit.
It maxed out at finding gamma rays with about 200 billion electron volts. So in 2015, the new study’s research team started collecting gamma ray data with HAWC as this observatory didn’t have the same restriction.
What does this mean for us?
Thankfully, there’s no need to worry as gamma rays pose no immediate threat to Earth.
However, it does suggest that the sun is more active than we previously thought. This could have implications for our understanding of space weather, which can have a significant impact on our planet.
The discovery also raises new questions about the nature of the sun and how it works.
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