Unsolved Solar Mystery: How 1,000 Undergraduate Students Helped Crack the Code

A group of physicists and almost 1,000 students got together to find the answer to an important question about the sun: why is its outer atmosphere so hot? In the end, they found that it probably wasn’t caused by solar flares like people had thought. This means that a popular astrophysics theory might not be true.

A group of mostly students in their first and second year at school did an incredible data analysis project over the course of two years. They studied the physics involved in more than 600 solar flares, which are huge bursts of energy from the sun’s hot outer atmosphere.

Recently, a group of 995 college students published their findings in a journal called The Astrophysical Journal. According to their research, solar flares may not be the cause of why the sun’s atmosphere is so hot which conflicts with what was previously thought. The lead scientific researcher from Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, James Mason, said he wanted the students to experience real science rather than just hearing about it.

Heather Lewandowski, the co-author of the study, said a lot of work was needed to make this research possible. It took around 56,000 hours of hard work from many undergraduate students. She also added that everyone who was involved in this project did an amazing job. Heather works at JILA, which is like a science team made up of people from the CU Boulder and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)

Challenging the Nanoflares Theory

Astrophysicists are puzzled by a mystery they have come across.

Telescope observations show that the sun’s atmosphere (corona) is really hot – with temperatures amounting to millions of degrees Fahrenheit. This is in comparison to its surface which is way cooler at only thousands of degrees Fahrenheit.

It’s like if you were standing right in front of a fire, and as you back away, it actually gets hotter – making no sense at all!

Some scientists think that really tiny flares, called “nanoflares,” might be causing the sun’s outer layer to be hot. We can’t see them with telescopes because they’re too small! It would be like trying to heat up a pot of water using thousands of matches – if all those small matches heated up together, it would get really hot!

But some research now shows that this theory might not be true. So, we can’t say for sure yet if these nanoflares exist or not.

Mason was hoping that the result they were getting would be different, he still believed that nanoflares were very important to heat the corona. But added to this idea was evidence that showed it could actually go against his thought instead. He explained that since he’s a scientist, no matter what, he has to follow whatever facts and data is leading him to.

Solving Solar Mysteries

At the peak of the Coronavirus pandemic, Lewandowski had a problem. She was teaching a class that fall called, “Experimental Physics I,” which was based on hands-on research. But now due to universities like CU Boulder moving their classes online, there was nothing her students could do.

Lewandowski said it was a difficult time when everyone was dealing with the pandemic, so students felt very alone and anxious. Mason from Colorado’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics then proposed an idea.

The scientist was interested in the evidence related to solar flares. He gathered data from thousands of solar flairs which were spotted between 2011 and 2018 using two instruments: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) series, as well as NASA’s Miniature X-ray Solar Spectrometer (MinXSS). MinXSS is a cube-shaped mission designed and built at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP).

Mason and Lewandoski had too many nanoflares to study on their own. So they asked the students for help. Mason told them that you can figure out details about the behavior of nanoflares by looking studying larger flares which have been observed by scientists for years.

The students got into groups of three or four and chose one ordinary flare to observe for the semester. Then, after a lot of math, they found out just how much heat each flare could give off onto the sun’s atmosphere.

When it was all added up, the nanoflares weren’t strong enough to make the sun’s corona super-hot which reaches temperatures of millions of degrees Fahrenheit.

A Team of Talented Researchers Solve the Mystery of Solar Flares and Coronal Heating!

Scientists don’t know why the Sun’s outer layer, called the corona, is so hot. One theory states that energy from inside the Sun travels to its atmosphere via some sort of wave in the magnetic field.

Another important outcome from this research is that young scientists and engineers had rare opportunities to learn about how real-life scientific research works – it often includes lots of teamwork and isn’t always perfect!

She said that even after the course had finished, students were still talking about it in the corridors. All the students had created a strong community and helped each other during difficult times.

A team of researchers have published a new paper in the Astrophysical Journal on May 9th, 2023 which is about Coronal Heating and its connection with solar flares. Their research was based on examining existing case studies and their findings may answer why Solar Flares happen. The team was made up of lots of people, like James Paul Mason, Alexandra Werth, Allison Youngblood, Donald Woodraska and many other talented young scientists. They hope their work will help us understand the mysteries surrounding the sun’s energy and heating even more.

Five people, Alexandra Werth, Colin West, Allison Youngblood, Donald Woodraska and Courtney Peck, co-authored a new study from CU Boulder. Alexandra is a postdoctoral researcher at JILA; Colin works as a teaching professor in physics; Allison is an astrophysicist at LASP and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Donald is the Data Systems Team Lead at LASP whereas Courtney holds the role of Data Systems Software Engineer at both LASP and the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES).

NASA and the U.S. National Science Foundation provided money for the study. The funds came from MinXSS mission, STROE Science & Technology Center and JILA Physics Frontier Center.