Understanding the Sun’s magnetic dynamo could help predict solar weather, such as potentially dangerous geothermal storms, solar flares and sunspots. Mathematicians have proposed a new model of the Sun that matches observed data.

The Sun’s internal magnetic field is directly responsible for space weather — streams of high-energy particles from the Sun that can be triggered by solar flares, sunspots or coronal mass ejections that produce geomagnetic storms. Yet it is unclear how these happen and it has been impossible to predict when these events will occur.

Now, a new study led by Dr Geoffrey Vasil from the School of Mathematics & Statistics at the University of Sydney could provide a strong theoretical framework to help improve our understanding of the Sun’s internal magnetic dynamo that helps drive near-Earth space weather.

The Sun is made up of several distinct regions. The convection zone is one of the most important — a 200,000-kilometre-deep ocean of super-hot rolling, turbulent fluid plasma taking up the outer 30 percent of the star’s diameter.

Existing solar theory suggests the largest swirls and eddies take up the convection zone, imagined as giant circular convection cells as pictured here by NASA.

However, these cells have never been found, a long-standing problem known as the ‘Convective Conundrum’.

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