Fanfan 🐻 nihiliste ✋️🔺️🤚 on Nostr: In 1955, an american physicist, Eugene Parker (who recently died and gave his name to ...

In 1955, an american physicist, Eugene Parker (who recently died and gave his name to the Parker Solar Probe you may have heard of), nevertheless came up with a handwavy explanation for what may be going on: the outer third of the Sun is like a saucepan, the fluid in there is heated from below by the nuclear reactions in the core of the Sun, and it convects: in other words, it sets the fluid in motion, which then carries the heat to the surface. These motions are extremely turbulent in the Sun. For those who know, the Reynolds number of this flow, which characterises turbulence, is 10^10. Also, the Sun is rotating ~ once / month on itself. And at relatively large scale, of the order of ~50000km or more (the solar radius is 700000km), these turbulent convective motions they start to get influenced by the coriolis force, the same force that affect the rotation and pressure of our weather systems on Earth.