magnetic reconnection tagged posts

Recently, a research team led by Prof. Gou Yanyu from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) found that the solar outburst structure undergoes a complex reconfiguration evolution during the early outbursts. This is an important advancement in the study of solar outburst activity. This study was published in Nature Astronomy.

In classical images, the core structure of a solar eruption is a magnetic rope consisting of spirally wound magnetic lines. When the eruption begins, the magnetic ropes around the core are transformed by magnetic reconnection into spirally wound magnetic lines, which wrap around the original core, leading to its rapid growth in a “snowball” fashion...

Quasi-periodic pulsations (QPPs; also known as quasi-periodic oscillations, i.e., QPOs) are electromagnetic emission phenomena that vary quasi-periodically with time. They appear in celestial transient events with different temporal/spatial scales, such as stellar flares, gamma ray bursts and fast radio bursts.

The sun, an ordinary star closest to us, is a place where flares with QPPs appear frequently...

Researchers have uncovered a previously hidden heating process that helps explain how the atmosphere that surrounds the Sun called the “solar corona” can be vastly hotter than the solar surface that emits it.

The discovery at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) could improve tackling a range of astrophysical puzzles such as star formation, the origin of large-scale magnetic fields in the universe, and the ability to predict eruptive space weather events that can disrupt cell phone service and black out power grids on Earth. Understanding the heating process also has implications for fusion research.

First clear 3D explanation

“Our direct numerical simulation is the first to pro...

A special type of aurora, draped east-west across the night sky like a glowing pearl necklace, is helping scientists better understand the science of auroras and their powerful drivers out in space. Known as auroral beads, these lights often show up just before large auroral displays, which are caused by electrical storms in space called substorms...