The sun's surface is blisteringly hot at 10,340 degrees Fahrenheit — but its atmosphere is another 300 times hotter. This has led to an enduring mystery for those who study the sun: What heats the atmosphere to such extreme temperatures? Normally when you move away from a hot source the environment gets cooler, but some mechanism is clearly at work in the solar atmosphere, the corona, to bring the temperatures up so high

Originally shared by +NASA

Clear evidence now suggests that the heating mechanism depends on regular, but intermittent explosive bursts of heat, rather than on continuous gradual heating.

Explore more: http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/sounding-rockets/strong-evidence-for-coronal-heating-theory-presented-at-2015-tess-meeting