Demystifying the myth of solar branches

1994/05/01 Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Astronomia

Every eleven years, more or less, large magnetic storms occur around the peak of the Sun-Earth activity cycle, which deteriorate power networks, interfere with satellite communications and take auroras to low latitudes, among others. When the media consults experts in berths, observatories, etc. requesting information on these facts, the usual answer is: "produced by energy particles emitted by solar branches".

Jack Gosling, a scientist at the National Laboratory of Los Alamos (Texas, USA), says the answer is wrong, that these facts do not have their origin in the solar branches. According to his opinion (we will say that more and more scientists accept it) these facts are mass imputations of the solar crown.

The mass imputations of the crown result from the rapid restructuring of the crown structures. They inject into the solar wind a lot of crown material. Such phenomena can only be seen through coronographs located in space. They appear as giant bubbles (see figure 1). It is a new phenomenon for scientists studying solar activity. It was discovered in the early 1970s.

Figure 2 shows the scheme of events proposed by Jack Gosling to explain auroras and other phenomena, as well as the one approved so far.