Lead
The sun is the most important source of energy on the earth, and its energy can not only maintain the normal operation of life on the earth, but also the foundation for the development of human civilization.
But for a long time, the sun was still a "mysterious" star, and people only relied on some perceptible anomalies to understand the sun's activities, such as solar erosions, solar eclipses, etc.
It is not until modern technology that human beings have been able to study the sun up close and learn more about its "face".
In recent years, NASA's Sun Finder has finally sent back high-definition images of the sun, allowing people to see things they've never seen before.
The appearance of these images not only gives a deeper understanding of the sun, but also raises new questions for scientists, because on the surface of the sun, a huge hedgehog-like structure has appeared, and there is an even stranger phenomenon, that is, the magnetic poles of the south pole and the magnetic pole of the north pole of the sun have been reversed.
What exactly causes these two phenomena?
1. What kind of star is the Sun?
The Sun is an ordinary-looking yellow dwarf star, which does not look strange from the outside, but its role is very large.
It is the energy produced by the sun with constant regularity that can support life on earth and maintain ecological balance.
However, the reality of the sun is more complex than what it looks like.
It has a radius of 109 times the Earth, a volume of 1,300,000 times the volume of the Earth, and a mass of about 330,000 times the mass of the Earth.
Inside the sun, the temperature is very high, and the temperature in the central core can even reach 15 million degrees Celsius.
How does this high temperature come about?
The energy of the sun comes from a reaction called "nuclear fusion", which is a high-energy reaction process inside the nucleus, in which high-energy particles and electromagnetic radiation are released, which are further released to the surface of the sun and illuminate the entire solar system.
Nuclear fusion has long been known to humans on Earth, and there is also a nuclear fusion reaction in the process of making nuclear bombs.
The reason why the sun has such a violent nuclear fusion reaction is because there is a strong gravitational pull inside the sun, which makes it very easy for the nuclei of atoms to be squeezed to meet the conditions for collision.
On the surface of the sun, the magnetic field carrying these energy particles also often "explodes", thus ejecting a large amount of the sun's material into the solar system, and this projectile material is coronal matter.
In addition to these common phenomena, the sun's magnetic field will also produce a seemingly "black" area on the surface of the sun, which is actually a place with low magnetic field energy, so there are not many condensed material particles, which appear to be darker.
However, this "black" area is often accompanied by the release of energy, most commonly flares.
When the energy of the magnetic field on the surface of the sun is very strong, a "flash" of energy occurs, which is called a flare.
Over the past century, the number of flares has been increasing, which means that the Sun's activity is increasing, and as the Sun's activity increases, so does the Sun's magnetic field.
The period of activity of the solar magnetic field is 10-11 years, but there are also very short periods of activity, even only a few months.
These cycles are formed by the magnetic field inside the Sun, which is very complex and changes most of them according to the cycle.
In the polar region of the sun, the magnetic field activity is often the strongest, but as the solar activity increases, the magnetic field will extend to the surface of the sun, but due to the rotational motion inside the sun, the solar magnetic field will be distorted in the process of activity, and this distortion will form a more complex magnetic field structure.
Because the activity of the sun is very strong, it is difficult to accurately measure its activity, but NASA successfully launched a probe in 2018, whose mission is to get close to the sun and study the sun's activity structure and material storms and other phenomena, this probe is the "Parker" solar orbiter.
Second, 25,000 kilometers of hedgehogs.
Ever since Parker sent back its first images of the sun, scientists have studied it in detail.
And in November of this year, Parker finally sent back the clearest image of the sun ever, which was 30 times sharper than previous images of the sun, so it quickly caught the attention of scientists.
After careful analysis of this image, scientists found that a very large hedgehog-like structure appeared on the surface of the sun, and the diameter of this hedgehog was 25,000 kilometers.
The core of this hedgehog is a relatively bright substance, and the surrounding area is a dull gas, which also means that this hedgehog is produced by the sun's atmospheric activity.
Because hedgehogs of this size are very rare in the sun's activity, scientists have studied it further, and they have found that the gas around the hedgehog has a tendency to darken, and this "darkening" continues to increase, so scientists speculate that the formation and disappearance of this hedgehog may be a cycle of solar atmospheric activity.
Inside the sun, there are many gases, which also follow the rotation of the sun, creating a "black" phenomenon on the surface of the sun, but in fact these are only relatively "dark" areas, which are actually very bright.
In these regions, complex structures often form, which are affected by the sun's magnetic field and are difficult to measure accurately, but scientists have found that most of these structures contain gaseous activity that ejects gas from the surface into the solar system, forming coronal matter.
However, there are a few structures that do not produce coronal material, but instead "suck" coronal material into it and eventually disappear.
This hedgehog structure belongs to the latter group, in which the bright part of its interior is a relatively "hot" substance, which is more active than the surrounding coronal material, and therefore, "sucks" gases from the surrounding coronal material.
This suction process generally lasts for a period of time, and then the structure gradually releases these gases, forming a relatively stable equilibrium state.
3. South Pole magnetic pole exchange.
In addition to the discovery of this "hedgehog" structure on the images of the sun taken by Parker, scientists also found that a strange phenomenon occurred at the poles of the sun's magnetic field detected by Parker, that is, the positions of the magnetic poles of the south pole and the magnetic pole of the north pole were reversed.
The Sun itself is a very active star, so its magnetic field continues to change a lot during the cycle of activity, and this change also affects the environment of the entire solar system.
The magnetic field of the sun is actually the product of the nuclear fusion reaction process inside the sun, and in the process of rotation of the sun, the magnetic field will form a diffusion structure, which will cause the poles of the sun's magnetic field to gradually extend to the surface of the sun, forming the sun's magnetic field.
On the surface of the sun, due to the rotational motion inside the sun, the magnetic field of the sun's polar region will be distorted with the rotation of the sun, and this distortion will cause local "chaos" at the poles of the sun's magnetic field.
These local "chaos" will also have an impact on the magnetic field in the polar regions of the Sun, forming a more complex magnetic field structure.
In addition, the sun's activity is very cyclical, so the sun's magnetic field will constantly change according to the activity cycle.
The swapping of the positions of the magnetic poles at the south pole and the magnetic pole at the north pole on the image of the Sun taken by Parker is caused by the solar cycle, because it is an unconventional phenomenon.
Scientists speculate that this phenomenon of exchanging poles may also be caused by a local "distortion" formed inside the Sun's magnetic field.
In the vicinity of the polar regions of the Sun, the magnetic field activity is also very active, so the probability of this "distortion" is also very high, and it is also an important reason for the exchange of positions between the magnetic poles of the South Pole and the North Pole.
epilogue
The sun occupies 99.86% of the total mass of the solar system and is the only source of energy in the solar system.
However, to build a Dyson sphere, it needs materials in the solar system, and it has been found on human probes that there may not be enough material in the solar system to make a Dyson sphere, so this may be good news for humans, after all, it will reduce the consumption of resources in the solar system.
In the future, human beings may also develop other energy sources, such as controlled nuclear fusion and antimatter, which will be a new step in the exploration of human civilization.
We also need to understand the sun in depth, because the sun produces energy from nuclear fusion, so the process of nuclear fusion reaction will produce high-energy particles and radiation, which may also have an impact on the Earth's power system.
Therefore, people may need to strengthen the monitoring and early warning of solar activity to ensure the stable operation of the earth's power system.