From time to time, the Sun emits irregular radiation waves that disrupt wireless communications, power grids and other vital processes on the Earth's surface.
Although scientists have made great strides in monitoring space weather, the cause of solar activity that emits these waves remains somewhat mysterious.
New research suggests that uneven gamma rays could be a factor in weather variability, which could help scientists understand how random radiation from the Sun affects us.
Gamma rays are a type of radiation emitted by the sun. It is stronger than other radiation. Solar physicists have long believed that the distribution of gamma rays across the solar disk is uniform and predictable, although solar cycles can vary. Observing an increase or decrease in its activity, and the occurrence of these fluctuations wherever they occur, means that gamma rays may play a role in causing solar flares.
Researchers from the United States, Portugal and Italy used data from the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope (FGST) to study the effect of gamma rays coming from the Sun relative to its axis of rotation from August 2008 to January 2022, and found that the distributed gamma ray radiation die is asymmetric and coincides with the solar pole reversal, which It occurs approximately every 11 years.
This became especially clear when the poles flipped in 2014, and further evidence supporting their findings is that the Sun's magnetic structure plays an important role in the formation of gamma rays.
As the researchers wrote in a paper published in the Astrophysical Journal, the heterogeneity of solar gamma radiation poses a major challenge to the solar radiation models used to date, however, it makes sense given that they spent the past year at peak solar activity observing to test these possibilities. During solar cycle 25, the Sun has spent the past decade generating strong magnetic fields at its poles through convection.
As these fields become stronger and more unstable, they are bound to reverse at some point, leading to what scientists call a solar maximum.
This phase of the solar cycle is characterized by abundant solar activity and coronal mass ejections (CMEs), which can lead to unstable space weather. In general, this interference affects radio communications, air traffic and ground electrical systems.
“It's about having the best tools to predict solar activity,” astrophysicist Bruno Assoli, co-author of the study, told The Washington Post. “Perhaps we can use new information from our very high-energy studies to help our models predict the behavior of the Sun.”
It is time for solar physicists and astronomy community scientists to conduct research proving the relationship between gamma rays and solar activity. Because the solar magnetic field is expected to reverse within the next two years, scientists have an ideal opportunity to observe the distribution of gamma rays, explosions, and emissions resulting from this reflection.