Durham University academic lands funding for solar research

A lecturer from Durham University has been awarded a grant for his part in a project that seeks to further our understanding of how the sun works. Anthony Yeates, from the Department of Mathematical Sciences , has landed the £68,000 award as part of an £818,000 consortium grant awarded to the universities of Dundee and Durham. The aim of the work is to understand the basic physical processes that go on in plasmas on the sun and throughout the Universe. In this project they will particularly focus on the solar corona, the outer atmosphere of the sun. Magnetic loops in the solar corona, solar flares and coronal mass ejections, are among the phenomena that scientists still cannot fully explain. Plasma, an ionised gas, clings to magnetic fields in the sun's atmosphere. This means that the magnetic loops in the atmosphere can be seen by high-powered telescopes due to the radiating plasma.