Sun's magnetic dance holds key to hot corona mystery

The Sun has a bright, glowing surface, and around it is a layer of gas called the corona.

Surprisingly, this outer layer is much hotter than the Sun's surface - about a million degrees hot!

That seems strange, because things usually get cooler the farther you get from a fire.

Scientists call this the 'corona mystery.'

Some thought heat might be carried up by waves, while others thought magnetic fields might snap and release energy like rubber bands.

Indian scientists used a special satellite called Aditya-L1 to study the Sun closely.

They found that the waves only provide a tiny part - about 7 per cent - of the energy.

The rest comes from magnetic fields that snap, reconnect, and rearrange themselves.

This helps explain why the Sun's corona is so hot.

The scientists now plan to study more solar eruptions to make sure their discovery is correct.