Scientists have discovered that our Sun emits enormous amounts of gamma rays, the strongest waves in the electromagnetic spectrum. This discovery is particularly important because the energy levels of these particles broke all records for solar radiation observations. Specifically, about 1 trillion eV.

“We analyzed six years of data and found this excess gamma rays. “When we first saw the data, we thought we had made a mistake somewhere,” said Meyer Un Nisa, co-author of the new paper.

Scientists have previously recorded gamma radiation emissions from our star. As a rule, such events are associated with particularly intense flares on the Sun. However, this case has a different character.

Recording the discovery was made possible thanks to the Cherenkov Observatory (High Altitude Su Cherenkov Observatory, or HAWC). This observatory is specially designed for observing high energy gamma rays and cosmic rays.

The Cherenkiv observatory is a network of 300 large water tanks, each containing about 200 tons of purified water. They are located between two extinct volcanoes in Mexico at an altitude of 3962 meters above sea level. Cherenkov radiation, named after 1958 Nobel laureate Pavel Cherenkov, occurs when charged particles move at a certain speed in water.

Thermonuclear processes inside the Sun also generate high-energy radiation, but these particles often cannot penetrate the surface of the star, let alone reach Earth-based detectors. Solar radiation mostly consists of infrared, ultraviolet and visible waves. By comparison, a visible wave carries about 1 electron volt of energy, while gamma rays detected by Nyssa and colleagues emit about 1 trillion electron volts.

These rays can make a very important contribution to solar physics. In fact, their emergence raised a number of important questions about the role of the Sun’s magnetic field in the observed gamma-ray phenomenon. Source