Mission to Sun shows turbulent magnetic field

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - X-ray images taken from a new international spacecraft show that the Sun's magnetic field is much more turbulent than scientists knew, NASA reported on Wednesday.

They saw twisting plumes of gas rising from the Sun's corona and reacting with the star's magnetic field, a process that releases energy and may power solar storms and coronal mass ejections, which in turn affect the Earth.

A turbulent magnetic field would, in theory, generate more energy than a steady-state field.

"Theorists suggested that twisted, tangled magnetic fields might exist," Leon Golub, senior astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said in a statement.

"With the X-Ray Telescope, we can see them clearly for the first time."

The spacecraft, named Hinode from the Japanese word for sunrise, was launched in September with an array of carefully designed instruments, each looking at a different layer of the Sun.

It is a joint project of the U.S., European and Japanese space agencies and Britain's Particle Physics Astronomy Research Council.

"For the first time, we are now able to make out tiny granules of hot gas that rise and fall in the sun's magnetized atmosphere," said Dick Fisher, director of NASA's Heliophysics Division.

'NEW REALM OF UNDERSTANDING'