Sometimes, the best place to hide a secret is in broad daylight. Just ask the sun.
Sometimes, the best place to hide a secret is in broad daylight. Just ask the sun.
“The sun is more surprising than we knew,” said Mehr Un Nisa, a postdoctoral research associate at Michigan State University. “We thought we had this star figured out, but that’s not the case.”
Nisa, who will soon be joining MSU’s faculty, is the corresponding author of a new paper in the journal Physical Review Letters that details the discovery of the highest-energy light ever observed from the sun.
The international team behind the discovery also found that this type of light, known as gamma rays, is surprisingly bright. That is, there’s more of it than scientists had previously anticipated.
Watching like a HAWC
Although the high-energy light doesn’t reach the Earth’s surface, these gamma rays create telltale signatures that were detected by Nisa and her colleagues working with the High-Altitude Water Cherenkov Observatory, or HAWC.
Read more at Michigan State University
Image: Michigan State University postdoctoral researcher Mehr Un Nisa at the High-Altitude Water Cherenkov Observatory. Credit: Courtesy of Mehr Un Nisa
