NASA which has always been interested in studying the mysteries behind sun, has recently developed a model to understand the sun's magnetic field lines and their strange swirling behaviour. Though they have been able to discover a lot about the sun, the scientists are still far from unveiling the facts about forces behind its magnetic field and their origin.
The images and videos of the model are quite astonishing, showing the global magnetic structure and how the plasma lines loop around the star and extend from within the sun to all the way out to the space, or the corona. The model is expected to give a better understanding on where the magnetic field lines are, how they interact with each other when the sun rotates and their effects on causing solar storms such as coronal mass ejections.
Quoting the space scientist Dean Pesnell, at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, "We’re not sure exactly where in the sun the magnetic field is created. It could be close to the solar surface or deep inside the sun – or over a wide range of depths." So you could see, how less of a knowledge we have about this magnificent feature of the sun.
From what the scientists already know, the sun's internal dynamo follows a cycle of 11 years, over which the solar activity spikes up slowly where by the end of the cycle, called Solar Maximum, occurs more chaos and stress. The magnetic field takes a complicated shape during this period and a lot of massive and powerful solar eruptions peak which can also affect other planets including Earth.
This is the main reason why scientists are so keen in understanding the sun's magnetism so that they could resolve the issues regarding how this magnetic field is responsible for solar explosions and to predict the solar weather which affects the interplanetary magnetic field and radiation. Although the goal still seems distant, the advancing computing technologies and the continuously improving models are a sign that we can hope for a day when the scientists can foresee the next solar storm before hitting Earth.
Sources
http://news.discovery.com/space/astronomy/visualizing-our-suns-messy-magnetic-mystery-160202.htm
http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2016/0203/Why-the-sun-s-magnetic-field-is-still-a-mystery
http://www.parentherald.com/articles/18937/20160203/new-study-tries-to-explain-suns-magnetic-mystery.htm
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