QUIZ - 4.2.13

1. How do we know what is happening inside the Sun?

• We know what is happening inside the Sun because mathematical models agree with observations of solar vibrations and solar neutrinos.

2. What causes solar activity?

• The stretching and twisting of magnetic field lines near the Sun's surface causes solar activity. Bursts of charged particles from the Sun can disrupt communications, satellites, and electrical power generation.

3. How does solar activity vary with time?

• Solar activity varies with time by the activity rising and falling in 11 - year cycles.

4. Do neutrinos have mass?

• YES, all evidence suggests that neutrinos do have mass but that their mass is tiny. (even by the standards of subatomic particles) Neutrinos' mass has never been measured accurately.

5. Do we get neutrinos from the Sun?

• YES, we do get neutrinos from the Sun.

6. What did Ray Davis got the Nobel prize for?

• Raymond Davis Jr. was a retired American chemist and physicist at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics laureate 2002, whom he shared with Masatoshi Koshiba & Riccardo Giacconi. Raymond Davis Jr. won the Nobel Prize in Physics laureate 2002, "for pioneering contributions to astrophysics, in particular for the detection of cosmic neutrinos." This means that he helped in finding and detecting solar neutrinos, ghostlike particles produced in the nuclear reactions that power the sun.

7. How long is the sunspot cycle?

• In a sunspot cycle, the magentic poles of the sun flip. Thus, this flipping occurs an average duration of about 11 years. For the Sun's poles to be back to the same position as when then first started, this would mean that the whole cycle would take 22 years.

8. Why are sunspots cooler?

• The high magentic pressure inside sunspots forces the hot plasma out, so that pressure is balanced. The matter in the sunspot interior is less dense and averages about 1000 to 3000 degrees cooler. (umbra - magnetically disturbed areas)

9. Are there magnetic fields in the Sun?

• YES, the Sun has a very large and very complex magnetic field.

10. What is the solar wind?

• Solar wind is a flow of charged particles from the surface of the suns.