Astronomers Solve the Mystery of the Sun’s Spinning Plasma Jets

The torrent of corona related discoveries keeps coming. Lately we’ve covered a variety of potential solutions to the “coronal heating problem” - why the Sun’s corona is so much hotter than its surface. Now, a paper led by a team of researchers from the University of Newcastle, Indian Institute for Astrophysics, and University of Sheffield, offers another answer - that we’ve been viewing the “spicules” that form in the lower solar atmosphere all wrong.