Scientists Finally Solve the Mystery of the Sun’s Fastest Particles

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The Sun acts as the Solar System’s ultimate particle accelerator. It pushes electrons to speeds approaching that of light, hurling them into space and filling the Solar System with what scientists call ‘Solar Energetic Electrons’ (SEEs).

Using ESA’s Solar Orbiter spacecraft, researchers have now tracked these high-energy electrons back to their origin on the Sun. The results show that there are two distinct types of SEE events. One is linked to powerful solar flares (eruptions from smaller, active regions on the Sun’s surface), while the other comes from massive outbursts of hot plasma in the Sun’s atmosphere (called ‘coronal mass ejections’, or CMEs).

“We see a clear split between ‘impulsive’ particle events, where these energetic electrons speed off the Sun’s surface in bursts via solar flares, and ‘gradual’ ones associated with more extended CMEs, which release a broader swell of particles over longer periods of time,” says lead author Alexander Warmuth of the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP), Germany.

https://scitechdaily.com/scientists-finally-solve-the-mystery-of-the-suns-fastest-particles/