Surfing Waves On The Sun

  • Released Thursday, September 1, 2011
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Cue the surfing music. Scientists have spotted the iconic surfer's wave rolling through the atmosphere of the sun. This makes for more than just a nice photo-op: the waves hold clues as to how energy moves through that atmosphere, known as the corona. Since scientists know how these kinds of waves—initiated by a Kelvin-Helmholtz instability if you're being technical—disperse energy in the water, they can use this information to better understand the corona. This in turn, may help solve an enduring mystery of why the corona is thousands of times hotter than originally expected. Seeing the big waves suggests they can cascade down to smaller forms of turbulence too. Scientists believe that the friction created by turbulence—the simple rolling of material over and around itself—could help add heating energy to the corona. Look for the waves rolling around the edges of the expanding dark spots in this visualization from the Solar Dynamics Observatory, captured on April 8, 2010.

Curling "surf" waves have been spotted traveling through the sun's atmosphere.

Curling "surf" waves have been spotted traveling through the sun's atmosphere.

Each of the surfer waves captured here in the sun's atmosphere are about the size of the United States.

The scientist talks about why surf waves on the sun could help explain how the sun's atmosphere gets so incredibly hot.

Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities causing surfer waves can appear whenever a material of lower density flows by something of higher density.

Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities causing surfer waves can appear whenever a material of lower density flows by something of higher density.

Waves can roll through any medium. Here the iconic surfer wave appears between bands in Saturn's atmosphere.

Waves can roll through any medium. Here the iconic surfer wave appears between bands in Saturn's atmosphere.

Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
Top image credit goes to Danny Ratcliffe, GSFC
Bottom image, NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

This page was originally published on Thursday, September 1, 2011.
This page was last updated on Wednesday, May 3, 2023 at 1:53 PM EDT.