We learn in school that matter has three states: gas, liquid and solid. Between the last two, however, there is a fourth, plasma. And if you are wondering what it is, the answer is in the images of the sun, the best ever taken, delivered on Wednesday by the brand new DKIST solar telescope (Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope), located in Hawaii.
In a 14-second sequence, actually condensing ten minutes of images, we see a kind of soup slightly wavy, gold in color and "honeycomb" motif. Each cell is actually a plasma bubble evacuating outside the gases burning inside the star.
Bubbles the size of France
The video you see represents 200 million square kilometers of sun (which makes 1.4 million!), Each bubble making several hundred km in diameter (imagine the surface of France, roughly).
"We even see structures 30 km in diameter" welcomed Thomas Rimmele, director of DKIST, during a press point, evoking a resolution "five times higher" than the capacities of any other solar telescope. “What we had before looked like a bright spot and is now breaking down into many smaller structures. "
Better still, these images are those filmed on December 10, during the very first day of operation of the telescope, which is in the development phase. It will therefore be necessary to follow the next liveries!