of Physics at the University of California, Berkeley, who is the Principal Investigator for RHESSI. Robert Lin, a faculty member in the Dept. "We are taking pictures of flares in an entirely new color, one invisible to the human eye, so we expect surprises, and RHESSI gave us a couple already," said Dr. A team of researchers used NASA's Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI) spacecraft to take pictures of a solar flare on July 23, 2002, using the flare's high-energy X-rays and gamma radiation. Solar flares are among the most powerful explosions in the solar system the largest can release as much energy as a billion one-megaton nuclear bombs. (Click on images for movie or high resolution still) Credit: NASA When they hit the surface, they produce the X-rays and gamma rays and heat the gas to over 20 million degrees. These particles travel down the field lines towards the surface, home of the solar antimatter factory (see close-up sequence). They move together and when they touch, break like overstretched elastic bands that reconnect above and below the break point, and accelerate particles to high energies. The two orange lines extending above the surface of the Sun represent oppositely directed magnetic field lines extending out into the solar corona. It also gave surprising details about how they blast subatomic particles to almost the speed of light. The observation may upset theories about how the explosions, called solar flares, create and destroy antimatter. The best look yet at how a solar explosion becomes an antimatter factory gave unexpected insights into how the tremendous explosions work.
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