NASA suspects sunquakes are coming from deep in the sun’s surface

You have heard of earthquakes, and even earthquake. Our sun also likes to participate in the shimmering action of sunquakes. NASA research reveals more about these events and their mysterious origins.

“These earthquake-like events release acoustic energy in the form of waves that ripple along the surface of the sun, like waves on a lake, within minutes of a solar flare – an explosion of light , energy and matter seen in the sun’s outer atmosphere, “NASA said in a statement Monday.

Researchers originally believed that sunquakes were powered by forces from the sun’s outer atmosphere, but NASA Observatory of solar dynamics (SDO), a sun-observing spacecraft, found some eye-catching data when it observed the activity of a sunquake “with unusually strong ripples emanating from a moderately strong solar flare” in 2011.

SDO’s Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager instrument was able to track earthquake waves to a source 1130 kilometers below the sun’s surface. This discovery changed ideas about the origins of earthquakes.

A team of researchers published a study on sunquake in The Astrophysical Journal Letters at the end of 2020. “Scientists still have not identified the exact mechanism that actually causes sunquakes, although the results provide the l ‘clue that their origins are probably lurking below the surface, “NASA said.

Researchers hope to collect more data on the sunquakes to see if others have a similar origin history to that of the 2011 event.

The sun has been a central concern of NASA and other agencies in recent years. We saw unprecedented views from our host star and the Parker solar probe and Solar Orbiter Spaceship have returned new data as we seek to understand how the sun works and its impact on our solar system and the Earth.