Sun’s Magnetic ‘Heartbeat’ Revealed

The sun’s magnetic “heartbeat” was revealed by a new study using a supercomputer simulation. The “solar heartbeat” beats deep within the sun’s interior and generates energy that ultimately produces sunspots and solar flares.

The research was published in Thursday’s edition of Science and probed the sun’s periodic magnetic field reversals. The model shows that the sun’s zonal magnetic field bands switch their polarity every 40 years.

The study was led by Paul Charbonneau of the University of Montreal in Canada. Charbonneau explained that modeling the sun has been a difficult thing to do, despite decades of trying. The first attempts were made in the 1980s and resulted in an approximation of the sun’s inner turbulence.

The turbulence, which happens at both large and small scales, can cause solar flares and sunspots. The dissipation of turbulence causes it to form smaller whirlpool shapes on the sun’s surface. Those vortices will gradually break into smaller ones until the energy completely dissipates.

But the small whirlpools you create with your hands in water can take place on a much larger scale on the sun — and cause much more interesting effects. Using supercomputers at the University of Montreal linked to Calcul Quebec, the researchers set up a model that would show how the energy dissipates on the sun.

The sun’s polar reversal schedule is about four times longer than its 11-year sunspot cycle, which governs the level of solar activity. Understanding the long-term process and being able to model it is remarkable, according to scientists.

But even the university’s supercomputers can’t handle the size of the simulation needed for the sun’s magnetic heartbeat. Charbonneau explained that the energy buildup in the simulation blows the model up before it can rung for a long period of time.

Charbonneau also acknowledged that his model is not perfect. This is because sunspots, solar flares, and other phenomena on the sun are too small to be modeled with today’s computing power. But they are able to understand the brightness changes in the sun and how the correspond with solar activity.

The darker the sun is, the less active it is. Charbonneau is also studying how the sun’s magnetic field can affect the transport of energy from the celestial body’s inside to its outside. He added, “There’s a link between convective energy transport and the magnetic cycle, and you can measure that through going through the simulation and pulling out the flows, the primary variables.”

So, while the sun’s magnetic heartbeat was revealed through Charbonneau’s supercomputer simulation, the scientist is still working to better understand the object’s magnetic cycle.

[Image via ShutterStock]