Parker Solar Probe Shared its First-Ever Findings of the Sun

On Wednesday, for the first time, NASA released the key findings from the Parker Solar Probe launched by the American Space Agency last year. The probe marked the fastest human-made object ever produced. The key findings revealed several interesting and unknown facts about the sun. Currently, the probe is within 15 million miles range of the sun. To make things into perspective, the current distance is around half of the distance between Mercury and the sun. 

Sun is made up of helium and hydrogen. Though scientists confirmed the thermonuclear reaction inside the sun, still they could not figure out the cause behind the high temperature in the solar atmosphere. The surface portion of the sun has a temperature of around 10,000 degrees. Though the temperature is massive, surprisingly, it is colder than what lies above the surface. 

Solar Atmosphere

Just after the surface, in the atmosphere, the temperature increases by at least 300 times, in comparison to the surface. Scientists predicted that the temperature might cross a million degrees. The atmosphere around the sun, corona, is also responsible for the massive acceleration of solar winds. The solar wind is a dominant wind that flows in the outward direction from the sun. The speed of the wind is more than a million miles per hour. The solar wind carries electrically charged particles with them. 

Justin C. Kasper, the principal investigator of one instrument attached to the probe, revealed that the vibration generated in the magnetic field of the sun plays an essential role in heating the solar atmosphere. Scientists explain the magnetic field vibration is similar to the vibration of Guitar strings. 

As most of the measurements conducted by scientists were from the surface of the earth- more than 90 million miles; as a result, scientists are expecting some more groundbreaking facts in the future.