Daily Inspiration — High energy from the sun

It is millions of degrees. We have models for how it gets to be so hot based on magnetic heating, but I'm not sure we would have predicted such high temperatures if we hadn't discovered the hot corona first, by looking at it.

Now there's a new mystery. There are gamma rays coming from the sun, and some of them have really high energies. With energies like that, you could make cosmic rays out of them without too much troublejust add a proton, and there are plenty of those around. But no one expected the sun to be producing gamma rays (or cosmic rays) of its own, especially at the high energy end. These gamma rays are so energetic that if we translate to a temperature, it would be trillions of degrees! That's far too hot to be plausible. There must be some kind of magnetic engine that is shooting these particles out with such impressive energy.

There's a mystery here and also an opportunity. If we can figure out how the sun generates such high energy photons, maybe other stars are doing the same thing"

Article by Natalie Wolchover at Quanta Magazine