Written by: Jesse Jenkins

Solar flares are among the most violent events in the solar system, releasing energy equivalent to millions of hydrogen bombs and propelling particles to near-light speed in seconds.

Yet only a small fraction of those particles ever escapes into interplanetary space. Why do so few make it out of the Sun’s atmosphere — and what happens to the rest?

Those questions have driven Meiqi Wang’s research since she arrived at NJIT as a Ph.D. student in 2019, years of work that earned her NJIT’s Outstanding Ph.D. Dissertation Award at Commencement 2026.

Written by: Jesse Jenkins

In an analysis of nearly three decades of solar acoustic data, NJIT physicists report evidence that the solar dynamo — the magnetic engine powering the Sun’s 11-year cycles and eruptive events — operates nearly 200,000 kilometers beneath the Sun’s surface.

Every eleven years, the Sun’s magnetic field flips. Sunspots — dark, cooler regions on the Sun’s surface that mark intense magnetic activity and often trigger solar eruptions —appear at mid-latitudes and migrate toward the star’s equator in a butterfly-shape pattern before fading as the cycle resets.

Written by: Jesse Jenkins

A special group of NJIT’s graduating seniors is finishing undergraduate life with a flourish — their achievements across the humanities and STEM sciences recently earned them the Outstanding Student Award at the College of Science and Liberal Arts Awards this month.

In the first of a two-part series, we catch up with this year’s winners who share their successes and memorable moments at NJIT, as well as exciting plans following Commencement 2024.

Written by: Jesse Jenkins

NJIT Ph.D. physics student John Stefan has new findings about earthquake-like events on the Sun that have recently shaken up the world of space science during one of the biggest international conferences for high-performance computing of the year — the SC22 Supercomputing Conference.

Written by: Jesse Jenkins

A solar radio burst with a signal pattern, akin to that of a heartbeat, has been pinpointed in the Sun’s atmosphere, according to a new study.

In findings published in the journal Nature Communications, an international team of researchers has reported uncovering the source location of a radio signal coming from within a C-class solar flare more than 5,000 kilometers above the Sun’s surface.

Written by: Jesse Jenkins

Bin Chen, associate professor of physics and researcher at NJIT’s Center for Solar-Terrestrial Research (CSTR), has been awarded the 2023 Karen Harvey Prize from the Solar Physics Division of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) for “significantly advancing” our understanding of the fundamental physics driving the largest explosions in our solar system — solar flares.

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