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SHEFFIELD, England, Feb. 24 (UPI) -- British scientists say they've discovered that massive magnetic waves emanating from giant holes on the surface of the sun come from deep inside the star. Researchers at the University of Sheffield say the large, dark regions, which look like holes on the surface, mark areas where the sun's magnetic field breaks through from the boiling interior and rises into the very hot solar atmosphere.
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The largest of these dark regions are often called sunspots and have been studied since their discovery as early as 364 BC, a university release said Thursday.
The researchers studied a magnetic region of the sun much smaller than a sunspot, although still many times greater than the size of the United Kingdom.
They found that the magnetic hole they observed, which is also known as a pore, channels energy generated deep inside the sun and that the magnetic field emerging through the pore is more than 1,000 times stronger than the magnetic field of the Earth.
They say their research could unveil secrets of the solar corona -- the outermost, mysterious and least understood layer of the sun's atmosphere -- with temperatures often a thousand times hotter than the surface.
Why the temperature of the sun's atmosphere increases further away from the center of energy production, which lies under the surface, is a great mystery of astrophysics, they say.
"This is a fascinating new discovery in line with a number of discoveries made in recent years by the team," Sheffield researcher Robertus von Fay-Siebenburgen said.
"Analyzing these waves may bring us closer to understanding the physical mechanisms in the atmosphere of a star."
