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At any given time, it is estimated that millions of plasma
jets called spicules cover the solar surface. The spicules comprise of
(comparatively) cool and dense plasma found in the interface region
called the chromosphere and the transition region of the sun and
continuously make incursions into the much hotter corona. They are
highly dynamic, and carry mass, momentum, and energy fluxes in form of
MHD waves propagating outwards. We find an intriguing parallel between
the simulated spicular forest in a solar-like atmosphere and the
numerous jets of polymeric fluid in the laboratory when both are
subjected to harmonic driving or Faraday excitation. In our
radiative-MHD simulations with realistic sub-surface convection, the
solar surface oscillations are excited similarly to those harmonic
vibrations. A forest of spicules are formed in our simulations and bear
substantially closer resemblance to clusters of jets observed in the
solar atmosphere compared to earlier efforts. Taken together, the
numerical simulations of the Sun and the laboratory fluid dynamics
experiments provide insights into the mechanism underlying the ubiquity
of jets. |