Eamon makes groundbreaking discovery on Sun’s surface

Dr Eamon Scullion, a former pupil of St Louis Grammar School, and his team at the University of Oslo have found an important piece of what is a long-standing puzzle in astrophysics.

According to Dr Scullion “this discovery will change the face of modern day solar and stellar physics research”.

Magnetic tornadoes are formed similarly to tornadoes on the earth buth have a magnetic skeleton and are 1,000 times larger in area. They have swirling speeds of 11,000km/hour which is many times faster than a bullet from a gun.

There are as many as 12,000 of these swirling monsters above the sun’s surface at all times and they are an important contributor to heating of the sun’s outer atmosphere.

It is generally believed that large magnetic arcades in the solar atmosphere, which are anchored to the bubbling sun surface can transport outwards the energy required for heating.

Dr Scullion and his team have discovered an alternative but widespread way of transporting enough energy for atmospheric heating due to relentless twisting of the magnetic arcades at their footprints.

A manifestation of this twisting appears close to the sun surface and Dr Scullion and his team have named this phenomenon - ‘solar magnetic tornado’.

He said: “These swirling tornadoes are visible all over the sun’s outer atmosphere. Only with the availability of extremely high resolution observations from the 1-metre Swedish Solar Telescope located at La Palma and together with data from the NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory have we been able to discover the significance of these tornadoes. This discovery will change the face of modern day solar and stellar physics research”.

Dr Scullion, who is originally from Loughgiel, went on to study for a BSc degree in Joint Physics and Applied Mathematics at Queen’s University, Belfast, following his studies at St. Louis, Ballymena.

He started his career in solar physics research at the University of Glasgow in 2005 where he completed his Masters in research in Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Between 2007 and 2010 he completed a PhD in Applied Mathematics with the University of Sheffield and now continues his postdoctoral research fellowship position at the University of Oslo, Norway.