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An international team of nearly 100 scientists was left perplexed after discovering the highest-energy light rays ever observed from the sun which has since created a new puzzle for the solar physicists to solve. The finding was published in Physical Review Letters after a six-year observation by more than 30 institutions across North America, Europe, and Asia.

The discovery

The most powerful blast of energy from the sun discovered was the first ever detection of solar gamma radiation in the teraelectronvolt (TeV) range.

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Scientists, since the 1990s have observed that the sun emits many different kinds of high-energy radiation including gamma rays. However, the study published on Thursday showed there is much more type of light, known as gamma rays emitted by the sun at much higher energy levels than previously anticipated.

“The sun is more surprising than we knew,” said Mehr Un Nisa, a postdoctoral research associate and study co-author at Michigan State University. “We thought we had this star figured out, but that’s not the case.”

Notably, there were no correlations between this powerful blast of energy and heightened solar activity, in fact, the sun, as per the findings was pretty calm at the time of the detection but our current models of the sun can’t account for it. Additionally, this type of radiation doesn’t even reach the Earth’s surface but does create “telltale signatures”.

About the HAWC

The groundbreaking observation was made with the High-Altitude Water Cherenkov Observatory (HAWC) which is located on the flanks of the Sierra Negra volcano near Puebla, Mexico at an altitude of about 13,500 feet.

What makes the site of the discovery important is that, unlike other observatories, it works around the clock. “We now have observational techniques that weren't possible a few years ago,” said Nisa.

She added that in this “particular energy regime” other ground-based telescopes couldn’t look at the sun because they only work at night, but this one operates 24/7.

HAWC uses a network of 300 large water tanks, each filled with about 200 metric tonnes of water which is nestled between two dormant volcano peaks in Mexico over 13,000 feet above sea level.

Therefore, from this “vantage point,” the researchers can observe the aftermath of gamma rays that collide with Earth’s atmosphere and by doing so produce high-energy particles called air showers that are imperceptible to the naked eye.

In these interactions, the gamma-ray energy is redistributed into particle fragments and light which are observed by the HAWC.

What was found?

The recent analysis is based on the data collected between 2014 and 2021 and observed emissions ranging between 0.5 and 2.6 TeV from the sun. Notably, among the energy in different wavelengths emitted by the sun, visible light carries energy of about 1 electron volt, compared to the 1 trillion electron volts, or 1 tera electron volt (1 TeV), that was observed by Nisa and her team.

“After looking at six years’ worth of data, out popped this excess of gamma rays,” said the study co-author. “When we first saw it, we were like, ‘We definitely messed this up. The sun cannot be this bright at these energies’,” she added.

Researchers noted that not only was the energy level surprising but so was the fact that they were seeing so much of it. Therefore, for the first time, the team has shown that the energies of the sun's rays extend into the TeV range, up to nearly 10 TeV, which does appear to be the maximum.

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