Dynamic plasma jets called spicules (the thin lines of light pictured in the figure) flare up from the Sun at speeds of more than 200 km per second. At any given time, around 10 million of them are observable on the Sun’s surface. Some solar physicists have suggested that the plasma and energy that spicules carry upwards might help explain the high temperature of the Sun’s fiery corona (see the article by Jack Zirker and Oddbjørn Engvold, Physics Today, August 2017, page 36). Despite spicules’ abundance, however, previous models of the Sun have been unable to account for their frequency or for all of their observed properties, including the strong magnetic waves they carry.
Juan Martínez-Sykora and his colleagues at the Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory and the University of Oslo have developed a new model of the magnetic properties of the Sun’s plasma in an...
