WASHINGTON—The sun’s magnetic field, which causes solar storms like the one that hit Earth this month and produced beautiful auroras, may originate at shallower depths in the star’s interior than previously thought, according to researchers.
The sun’s outer 30 percent is comprised of an “ocean” of churning gases plunging more than 130,000 miles (210,000 km) below the solar surface. The research, comparing new theoretical models to observations by the sun-observing SOHO spacecraft, provides strong evidence that its magnetic field is generated near the top of this ocean—less than 5 percent inward, or about 20,000 miles (32,000 km)—rather than near the bottom, as long hypothesized....
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