Inouye Telescope Confirms 20-Km Solar Plasma Vortices as Coronal Heating Clue

3 articles · Updated · spacedaily.com · Aug 13

Nature paper data from the 4-meter Inouye telescope show plasma vortices as small as 20 kilometers across at magnetic-boundary edges on the Sun’s photosphere—the first direct confirmation of predicted Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities there.
416-nanometer observations near the telescope’s resolution limit captured the shear-driven swirls, with a median size of about 65 kilometers and a range of roughly 25 to 170 kilometers.
Researchers say the twisting motion could braid magnetic fields and help move energy upward into the million-degree corona, but they did not measure how much of the corona’s heat budget the process explains.
The finding adds one observed mechanism to a problem open since 1939, when spectroscopy established that the corona is far hotter than the Sun’s roughly 5,500-degree-Celsius visible surface.
Because the smallest vortices sit at the diffraction limit and no independent confirmation has been published, their exact size, speed and lifetime may be refined by future observations.