Summary and Perspective
Abstract
This meeting celebrated a double anniversary. A 100 years ago, George Ellery Hale had a hunch: he had noticed the vortical structure in Hα above sunspots, and he interpreted this as evidence for a vortex flow, which (he supposed) carried electric charges round a spot, and so provided an azimuthal electric current that would generate a magnetic field like that in a solenoid (Hale 1908a). His hunch was actually wrong since (as we now know) the solar plasma is electrically neutral - but when he looked for spectroscopic evidence of a magnetic field, using the recently discovered Zeeman effect, he found that there were kilogauss magnetic fields in sunspots (Hale 1908b). This was the first demonstration that magnetic fields were present outside the earth.
- Publication:
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Magnetic Coupling between the Interior and Atmosphere of the Sun
- Pub Date:
- 2010
- DOI:
- 10.1007/978-3-642-02859-5_29
- Bibcode:
- 2010ASSP...19..346W
- Keywords:
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- Physics