Scientists have detected a strange new type of high-frequency wave on the sun's surface, and the waves are moving three times faster than scientists thought was possible.
The acoustic waves, called high-frequency retrograde (HFR) vorticity waves, were spotted rippling backward through the sun's plasma in the opposite direction of its rotation.
Scientists can't see into the sun's fiery depths, so they often measure the acoustic waves that move across its surface and bounce back toward its core to infer what's going on inside.
But the unprecedented speed of the HFR waves, spotted in 25 years of data from space and ground-based telescopes, has hinted that scientists might be missing something big.
Missing something big
Scientists initially thought that acoustic solar waves type close to the sun’s floor due to the Coriolis impact, through which factors on a rotating sphere’s equator appear to maneuver sooner than factors on its poles.
Once the waves type, scientists assume one in all three potential processes may speed up them into HFR waves: both the sun’s magnetic field or its gravity may very well be boosting the Coriolis waves,
or superhot convection currents shifting beneath and throughout its floor may very well be dragging them to unprecedentedly excessive speeds. But none of those potential processes match the information.
"However, these new waves don't appear to be a result of these processes, and that's exciting because it leads to a whole new set of questions."
Filling within the gaps of their data may assist the researchers higher perceive the sun’s inside, in addition to get a greater sense of how the sun impacts Earth and different planets within the solar system.