The world's biggest solar telescope caught vortexes on the Sun's surface
摘要
丹尼尔·井上太阳望远镜（全球最大太阳望远镜）的观测证实，太阳表面等离子体中普遍存在开尔文-亥姆霍兹不稳定性，即流体速度差导致的涡旋现象。此前因该现象尺度极小，低于2米级望远镜分辨率而长期未被发现。研究团队指出，这一发现可能改变对太阳大气中热量、质量及磁能传输机制的理解。
Wherever two fluids slide past each other at different speeds, the boundary between them buckles, then curls, then rolls up into vortexes. It’s called the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability, and the physics behind it was worked out in the late 1860s. We know this instability explains why wind causes ripples on the surface of water and clouds shear into a row of curves.
For decades scientists argued the same thing must be happening with plasma on the surface of the Sun, and yet nobody had been able to confirm it. Now, a team led by David Kuridze and Friedrich Wöger of the National Solar Observatory reports that Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities are not just visible on the Sun, but they’re ubiquitous. Their new study proposes that this may change the way we think about how heat, mass, and magnetic energy move through the Sun's atmosphere.
Telescope’s test drive
The reason plasma whirlpools on the Sun stayed hidden for so long is rather trivial: they are very small. Their scale sits below what telescopes with mirrors smaller than 2 meters can resolve. For most of the history of solar physics, that has ruled out every telescope on Earth. This changed when the US National Science Foundation opened the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope, a 4-meter instrument in Hawaii and the largest solar telescope in the world. The telescope entered its operational phase back in November 2021.
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