Antimatter Factory on Sun Yields Clues to Solar Explosions

	Image from animation of solar flares

The best look yet at how a solar explosion becomes an antimatter factory gave unexpected insights into how the tremendous explosions work. The observation may upset theories about how the explosions, called solar flares, create and destroy antimatter. It also gave surprising details about how they blast subatomic particles to almost the speed of light.

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. 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.

"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. Robert Lin, a faculty member in the Dept. of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, who is the Principal Investigator for RHESSI.

For view the full article on the observations of solar explosions, go to: http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/2003/0903rhessi.html