Mysterious and repetitive radio burst signals, which largely mirror those of a heartbeat, have been spotted by scientists to go on every 10 to 20 seconds. The Daily Mail reports that such an oddity was attributed to a C-class flare that is located around 3,106 miles from the surface of the sun.
Solar Heartbeat
The pulses of radio bursts are known as QPP (Quasi-Periodic Pulsations). They have been a long-standing mystery and subject of debate among solar scientists.
The authors of the study proposed that knowing the heartbeat's origin, which is the solar flare, may help specialists know more about the extent of solar storms' destructiveness. Their study was included in the Nature Communications journal.
Sijie Yu, study co-author and astronomer associated with the New Jersey Institute of Technology, mentioned that the discovery was quite unexpected and that the pulsating pattern is vital to knowing more about the release and dissipation of energy into the sun's exposure during these solar flares.
Solar radio bursts are usually linked to solar flares. They are strong radio wave bursts from the sun and are known to harbor repetitive patterns.
Origins of Mysterious Solar Heartbeat
The team looked into where the heartbeat came from after examining microwave observations of a particular solar flare back on July 13, 2017. This event was captured by the EOVSA (Expanded Owens Valley Solar Array) radio telescope at NJIT.
By doing so, the team was able to pinpoint the QPP signal at the electric current sheet's base point. It stretches over 15,534 miles through the flaring region of the core of the eruption. Oppositions then approach one another, break, and then connect again.
Such reconnection is referred to as magnetic reconnection. The Daily Mail also reports that this is the first time a QPP has been spotted in such a location.
Live Science also reports that the researchers also found a signal of a secondary heartbeat. The unexpected signal, which was seemingly connected to the original one, enabled researchers to identify what took place in solar flares that led signal pairs to be triggered. Yuankun Kou, a Ph.D. student from NJU (Nanjing University), says that the detection may help them point out which one led to the other one.
With EOVSA's microwave imaging, the researchers were able to gauge electron energy spectrums for the two sources. They discovered that the high-energy electron distribution within the main burst differs in phase compared to the secondary one. Co-author and associate professor Bin Chen stresses that this strongly indicates the close link between the two QPPs.
Yu says that the findings shed fresh insight on a vital phenomenon that underlies the process of reconnection and could be a driver of such occurrences. The study also prompts the interpretations and implications of previously documented QPP events to be reexamined.
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