Why is the suns core cooler than its crust?
From correspondents in Washington, United States, 10:31 AM IST Why is our sun’s outer crust some 200-300 times hotter than its core? One lot of astrophysicists claimed to have the answer last year. But now another group says the first lot got it all wrong, leaving the paradox unexplained. The sun’s core is about 6,000 degrees Celsius, but its outer layer, the corona, is far hotter. It’s a phenomenon that influences solar weather forecasting and the theory behind fusion reactors. Last year American scientists said they had solved the mystery with research showing how high-energy AlfvEn wave structures could super-heat the corona. This seemed to be confirmed by astrophysicists who said they had detected AlfvEn waves in the corona. They had published their results in prestigious journal Science. Now, however, scientists at the University of Warwick say these waves are well-known magneto-acoustic kink waves – not AlfvEn waves. These, they say, are a better fit as an explanation for the com
