Abstract

Whilst the solar surface is a few thousand degrees, the solar corona (~2Mm further out than the surface) is roughly a million degrees. This has formed one of the greatest challenges in the solar physics, usually referred to as the coronal heating problem: how is the million-degree corona obtained and maintained against radiation. The last 70 years of solar research has focussed heavily on understanding heating mechanisms in an effort to solve the coronal heating problem. However, my research has shown that mechanisms often studied in the context of heating, such as shocks, may actually be cooling the solar plasma. Here I present results on radiative shocks and present analytical and numerical evidence of temperature-reducing shocks occurring under coronal conditions. The turbulent numerical simulation allows statistics of shocks to extracted, with roughly 40% of shocks having a net reduction in temperature. As such, the role of shocks in heating/cooling the solar atmosphere is an open question.