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A study by ARIES (Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences, Nainital — an autonomous DST institute), with USO-PRL and Ahmednagar College, found the Sun's atmosphere rotates FASTER than its visible surface, and rotation speed increases with height — contrary to the angular-momentum-conservation pattern seen in Earth's atmosphere.
Using the Nobeyama Radioheliograph (Japan) and a '2D image-correlation method', researchers also found rotation speed slightly decreases when solar activity (sunspot count) is stronger.
The findings, published in Astronomy & Astrophysics Letters, will help refine models of solar activity and space weather affecting satellites, communication, navigation and power infrastructure on Earth.
Conservation of angular momentum predicts that as a rotating gaseous layer expands outward (like an ice skater extending their arms), it should slow down — a pattern Earth's atmosphere broadly follows. The Sun's atmosphere instead speeds up with height, a genuine anomaly that challenges simple extensions of this classical-physics expectation to solar plasma.
Simple Analogy: An ice skater who stretches their arms out but somehow spins FASTER, not slower — that is what the Sun's atmosphere is doing
Autonomous research institute under DST conducting astronomy, astrophysics and atmospheric sciences research
Solar-observation facility contributing to the study
GS Paper 3 > Science & Technology > Space Science
Low — a one-off research finding, useful mainly as a factual pick
Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences — DST autonomous institute at Nainital, focused on astronomy/astrophysics/atmospheric sciences