The sun's super-heating mystery may be solved with Parker Solar Probe
Quote:
Originally Posted by James Lynch, University of Michigan
It's one of the greatest and longest-running mysteries surrounding, quite literally, our sun—why is its outer atmosphere hotter than its fiery surface?
University of Michigan researchers believe they have the answer, and hope to prove it with help from NASA's Parker Solar Probe. In roughly two years, the probe will be the first manmade craft to enter the zone surrounding the sun where heating looks fundamentally different than what has previously been seen in space. This will allow them to test their theory that the heating is due to small magnetic waves travelling back and forth within the zone.
I think it's just mind boggling that we managed to engineer a device that is going to travel in an area with a temperature well over a million degrees, do measurements, get out of it and relay results to earth.