Breaking space news, the latest updates on rocket launches, skywatching events and more! You are now subscribed Your newsletter sign-up was successful Want to add more newsletters? The sun's powerful magnetic dynamo that drives sunspot activity and contributes to unleashing powerful solar flares and coronal mass ejections has been confirmed as existing 124,000 miles (200,000 kilometers) beneath the sun's visible surface — equivalent to 16 Earth widths' deep. Earth's magnetic dynamo is situated in our planet's outer core, where the convection of molten iron generates electrical currents. The sun's core is a nuclear furnace of shredded atoms, and its inner two-thirds make up a radiative zone of gamma-ray photons, so the solar magnetic field cannot be generated there. Instead, all the convection takes place in the sun's outer-third, in the suitably named convective zone.…