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Science 21 June 1996:
Vol. 272. no. 5269, pp. 1738 - 0
DOI: 10.1126/science.272.5269.1738
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Research News

James Glanz

Madison, Wisconsin--An instrument aboard the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory satellite has detected 100-million-degree oxygen ions in the sun's atmosphere, investigators announced at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society here last week. That temperature is tens of times higher than has ever been measured before in the corona, the sun's halo of ionized gases. But a handful of solar physicists aren't surprised. They say that the detection of superhot oxygen provides crucial support for theories that they have proposed to solve the mystery of what heats the corona to millions of degrees when the surface of the sun is a cool 6000 degrees.




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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)