The sun's outer atmosphere is millions of degrees hotter than its surface
Common sense suggests that moving away from a heat source should make things cooler, but the sun defies this logic with a million-degree surprise.
The surface of the sun sits at a relatively mild 5,800 degrees Celsius, yet the corona—the wispy atmosphere extending far into space—soars to over two million degrees. This thermal inversion is as counterintuitive as walking away from a campfire and suddenly feeling your skin begin to blister. For decades, this discrepancy baffled astronomers because heat typically dissipates as it travels outward.
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