At https://phys.org/news/2025-10-scientists-elusive-solar-power-sun.html … solar physicists, via astronomers, have found evidence of small scale torsional Alfven waves in the Sun’s corona. These magnetic waves, or electro-magnetic waves, have been a sought after find since the 1940s, we are told. By some, I might hasten to add, and probably very few. The evidence came from a solar telescope on Hawaii. This would seem to explain how its outer atmosphere, the corona, reaches temperature of a millions degrees, whilst its surface is by far less hot.
These small twisting waves are present all the time, unlike the larger waves visible during an eclipse, for example. The big waves are generally active only when the Sun is especially active – for example, leading up to a CME event. The small waves were predicted by Hannes Alfven back in 1942 – and there we have the 1940s expectation in one. Alfven has not been the favourite of every solar physicist, one might add. The question being asked – do these waves power the Sun? Do they create energy that permeates the whole of the solar system.
The new torsional Alfven waves cause a twisting motion that can only be detected through spectroscopic analysis. Measuring how plasma waves towards and away from the Earth. creating red and blue shifts on opposite sides of magnetic structures. In the process the corona is heated up to temperatures exceeding one million degrees celsius. Hot enough to accommodate plasma moving away from the Sun as solar wind. This goes on to fill the entire solar system.
For greater info go to https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-025-02690-9 …
… but what a week it was as next we have this gem at https://phys.org/news/2025-10-young-stars-ejecting-plasma-clues.html … where the essence of the research is the discovery, via telescopes once again, that young stars are very active as far as CMEs are concerned. They create masses of plasma that beam into space – or into their own solar systems. Scientists are now wondering if, when the Sun was young and very active, the plasma may have affected the emergence and evolution of life on earth. No doubt playing a role in mutations and evolving features as time went by. Did these energetic waves of energy alter early planetary atmospheres?