Recently,  under the support of Major Program of National Natural Science  Foundation of China (10833007), Dr. JI Haisheng, the researcher of PMO,  cooperating with Professor Philip Goode and associated Professor CAO  Wendao of Big Bear Solar Observatory (BBSO),with the 1.6 m aperture New  Solar Telescope (NST) at BBSO, for the first time carried out high  resolution imaging observations of the Sun at He I 1083 nm using the  1083 nm Lyot filter made by the Nanjing Institute for Astronomical and  Optical Technology and achieved great success. For the first time,  scientists of China and U.S. obtained the highest resolution images of  the Sun at 1083 nm and discovered structures of ultrafine magnetic loops  with a surprisingly narrow diameter of only about 100 km. These  ultrafine magnetic loops are ubiquitous on the Sun and rooted in  convection intergranular lanes. By combining simultaneous observations  from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) for the high temperature  coronal plasma, they are identified as ultrafine channels of the outside  flowing of high temperature material and energy. This finding is  expected to resolve the long standing puzzle of "solar coronal heating".  The result is published in ApJ Letter with the first author from PMO in  May this year.

What  causes the anomalous heating of solar corona is an unresolved question,  which along with dark matter and dark energy puzzles et al. is chosen  as one of the eight most compelling mysteries of astronomy by the  journal of Science. Resolving the puzzle of coronal heating is taken to  be one of the main scientific objectives by almost all the most  important international solar instruments, such as Hinode satellite  launched in 2006 by Japan. It is also one of the important scientific  objectives of SDO satellite launched in 2010 by NASA.

The  finding fundamentally answers where on the photosphere the energy comes  from to heat the corona. Possible physical process is as follows: the  continuous convection motions of the photosphere granules concentrate  magnetic fields to the place of intergranules, forming small scaled  strong magnetic fields in intergranules. Then the dynamics of the strong  intergranular magnetic fields produce the out flowing of high  temperature material and energy.

The result is reported by the web site of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, see http://www.nsfc.gov.cn/Portal0/InfoModule_375/48855.htm. More recently, NASA releases news for this result, see http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/news/corona-loops.html.