The clearest image taken of the sun reveals mysterious details

The world's most powerful solar telescope captured high-resolution images of the Sun's visible surface, revealing a hidden process that stimulates solar activity. The National Science Foundation's Inouye Solar Telescope, located near the summit of Haleakala volcano on the island of Maui, Hawaii, to focus on a magnetically active region near a sunspot.

Sunspots are hot spots of solar activity. Time-lapse images and videos provide an unprecedented look at the Sun's complex and dynamic “photosphere,” the visible surface of the Sun made up of a thin layer of atmosphere shaped by magnetic fields and streams of liquid plasma.

The combination of these detailed images and computer simulations has contributed to a major breakthrough in solar physics: the identification of features of tiny eddies on the Sun's surface that may directly affect life on Earth. These swirling patterns are known as Kelvin-Helmholtz instability, or KHI for short, and may explain long-standing solar mysteries, such as why the solar corona (the Sun's outer atmosphere) is much hotter than its surface.

These vortices can also fuel the accumulation of the Sun's magnetic energy that triggers solar flares and coronal mass ejections. When these solar activities head toward Earth, they release particles that can disrupt satellites, power grids, and other communications infrastructure.

These results, published in Nature magazine on Wednesday, may help scientists understand the behavior and activity of the sun, which are difficult to predict. Dr. David Kuridze, lead author of the study and an assistant astronomer at the National Solar Observatory in Boulder, Colorado, wrote to Ufaq News: “Although theoretical models had indicated the possibility of suitable conditions for generating Kelvin-Helmholtz instability in the photosphere, the observation of the structures spreading on a large scale across the surface was a big surprise.”

He added: “The vortices on the surface of the sun have always represented a fundamental question regarding the physics of the sun. For the first time, we were able to determine their origin and the mechanism of their formation.”

An ever-changing surface The phenomenon of Kelvin-Helmholtz instability occurs when two fluids move at different speeds past each other, creating small disturbances that lead to spiral eddies, according to the study. Scientists have observed this pattern of instability forming in the waves of lakes and oceans, clouds, and in the atmosphere of giant gas planets such as Jupiter and Saturn.

The images taken by the Inouye telescope are the first time this phenomenon has been observed on the surface of the Sun. Scientists have long believed that the Sun accumulates a store of magnetic energy through a process known as flux braiding, when magnetic field lines wrap around each other.

As tension increases, these lines become unstable, causing the magnetic fields to disentangle and then magnetically reconnect, releasing a burst of energy. However, researchers do not fully understand why these wrap patterns occur in the first place, but new observations offer a possible explanation.

The researchers realized that vortices that form along the edges of magnetic regions across the Sun's surface could cause the magnetic fields to become twisted and tangled. These formations also explain how heat is transferred to the sun's outer atmosphere.

“The Kelvin-Helmholtz instability is a very effective way for the Sun to break up large plasma flows into smaller movements,” Kuridze explained. He then added: “When this phenomenon occurs in the system, it becomes much easier to induce a hierarchy of energy transfer down to the micro- and nanoscales.

Once energy reaches these microscopic levels, it can be easily released as heat. Therefore, observing this phenomenon across the surface of the Sun provides us with a missing and very important piece of the puzzle.”

He pointed out that the magnetic vortices created by Kelvin-Helmholtz instability actually act as small-scale engines capable of generating, transmitting, and releasing energy throughout the surface of the sun. Kuridze added that these constantly moving eddies could act as energy stores that fuel larger solar activities, such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections.

However, the Sun is constantly emitting tiny nanoflares and other small-scale activities every moment. He said: “It has been shown that these microscopic events have a greater impact on the thermal and magnetic structure of the Sun compared to massive and rare flares.

There is a strong consensus among solar physics experts that uncovering the secrets of global solar behavior begins with understanding these precise scales. "Solar magnetism is fundamentally shaped by these small-scale events, which ultimately determine space weather affecting Earth's technological infrastructure."

For his part, Nour Rawafi, the scientist responsible for NASA's Parker Solar Probe project at the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, and who is not involved in the new study, said that this discovery represents a scientific breakthrough that may significantly improve scientists' understanding of the dynamics of the sun's lower atmosphere. “(The discovery) provides a potential mechanism for how the enormous mechanical energy generated in the lower solar atmosphere and convection zone is transformed and transferred to the upper solar atmosphere,” Rawafi wrote to Ufaq News.

He added: “The widespread vortices and the associated Kelvin instability seem logical from a physical standpoint. The only thing is that we did not previously have the ability to observe those delicate solar structures in which these phenomena occur extensively.”

He concluded that this discovery was possible thanks to the “Inouye” telescope, which has provided us with amazing images of the sun since 2019.