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Access through your institution Buy or subscribe An 88-year-old mystery surrounding sunspots has finally been solved, thanks to the ingenious application of an optical tomographic imaging
technique. Sunspots are relatively cool regions of the solar disk where bundles of magnetic field lines break through the surface. A puzzling phenomenon, first noted by J. Evershed in 1909
(_Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc._ 69, 454-457; 1909), concerns the apparent violation of one of the basic laws of physics — conservation of mass. Spectroscopic observations of sunspots show a
flow of material streaming across the face of the spot, only to perform a mysterious vanishing act at its outer edge. This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
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about institutional subscriptions * Read our FAQs * Contact customer support Authors * Karen Southwell View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar
RIGHTS AND PERMISSIONS Reprints and permissions ABOUT THIS ARTICLE CITE THIS ARTICLE Southwell, K. Down the sunspot plughole. _Nature_ 389, 23 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1038/37883 Download
citation * Issue Date: 04 September 1997 * DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/37883 SHARE THIS ARTICLE Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content: Get shareable
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