Historical overview (and misconceptions) of convection in solar/stellar atmospheres

by Prof. Hendrik C. Spruit (Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics)

Friday 22 Sept 2023, 10:30 → 11:30 Europe/Stockholm

FC61 (AlbaNova Main Building)

Controversial discussions about the nature of the Sun's granulation date back almost a century. How can a flow with a Reynolds number of 10^12 look more like a bowl of soup than ferocious turbulence? After a historical overview I discuss how the answer is closely related to a misconception about the forces that drive the granulation as they are observed in ever improving observations and realistic numerical simulations. A closer look at this problem also explains the so-called 'convection conundrum': the discrepancy between results from helioseismic measurements of subsurface flows' on the one hand and 'whole convection zone' simulations on the other.