UC Santa Cruz applied mathematicians produced the first self-consistent models of the Sun’s tachocline incorporating the correct dynamical ingredients.
UC Santa Cruz applied mathematicians produced the first self-consistent models of the Sun’s tachocline incorporating the correct dynamical ingredients.
In the late 1980s, scientists realized they could understand the interior properties of the Sun by observing the sound waves that resonate inside it. This technique, called helioseismology, revealed a mysteriously thin dynamical layer in the interior of the Sun that became known as the tachocline.
The tachocline is extremely thin but has been believed to play a major role in driving the magnetic properties of the Sun. For years, scientists have theorized, calculated, and modeled these layers of the Sun, but the question of the dynamics that lead to the existence of the tachocline has remained an extremely complicated mathematical puzzle.
Now, researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, have produced the first self-consistent models of the Sun’s interior that incorporate the appropriate dynamics and spontaneously produce a tachocline, marking a major step forward for solar physics. Their models were produced using NASA’s most powerful supercomputer, and results are published in a study in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Read More: University of California – Santa Cruz
Image: Image of the Sun taken from the Solar Dynamics Observatory satellite, showing the quiet corona and magnetic structures like coronal loops, which trace the intricate patterns of magnetic field lines that emerge from the Sun. (Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio, the SDO Science Team, and the Virtual Solar Observatory.
