Physics & Astronomy Seminar: Sam Van Kooten

Sam Van Kooten will give a seminar entitled "Dark Lines and Bright Points: A Close Look at the Surface of the Sun" on Tuesday, November 27 at 3:45 p.m.

Calvin College Physics and Astronomy Department presents a seminar entitled “Dark Lines and Bright Points: A Close Look at the Surface of the Sun” by Sam Van Kooten on Tuesday, November 27 at 3:45 pm in SB 110. Join us to hear about the research of this graduate of Calvin’s Physics program.

This talk will be centered around coronal heating, a hot topic in solar physics. Van Kooten will begin with an overview of the Sun, from the core to the corona, discussing the physics at work in each region. Then he will focus in on the top layers of the Sun and describe the coronal heating problem: what it is, what people think about it, and why we don't yet have firm answers. He will finish by presenting some research he’s done regarding one proposed driver of coronal heating: the motion of small bright points in the dark lanes of the solar surface. These bright points are regions where concentrated magnetic flux creates a tube of magnetically-bound plasma---a flux tube---reaching from the solar surface to the corona. Shaking of the bottom of this tube by convective churning excites waves that travel up the tube to the corona. There the wave energy is deposited as heat. The research he has done involves investigating just how these bright points' motion is driven by photospheric convection as well as preparing to measure this motion more accurately once the DKIST solar telescope comes online in 2019.

 Refreshments will be served at 3:30 in SB 157

Location details

Science Building Room 110