The Sun's outer atmosphere, the corona, is a plasma filled with magnetic fields in form of loops. These loops host different types of waves including the Slow magneto-acoustic waves which are sound-like waves that travel along these loops causing them to compress and expand. Studying how these waves lose energy helps to understand how the corona gets heated to millions of degrees—an unsolved mystery.A major puzzle is that these waves fade away, or dampen, much faster than what theories can explain.

Astronomers from IIST have uncovered a remarkable example of gas swirling around a galaxy more than 8 billion years ago. In their new paper,titled “Kinematic analysis of an Ultra-Strong Mg II absorber at z ≈ 1.13 linking to Circumgalactic Gas Structures,” the team studied spectral signatures in the light from a distant quasar .Their observations revealed a massive reservoir of cold gas dating back to a time when the Universe was less than half its current age. This gas lies just about 18 kiloparsecs from a large, actively star-forming galaxy.