Fast magnetic reconnection, the rapid convergence, separation and explosive snapping together of magnetic field lines, gives rise to northern lights, solar flares and geomagnetic storms that can disrupt cell phone service ...
Plasma Physics
Feb 19, 2019
1
193
Solar flares shouldn't produce X-rays, but they do. Why? The one-size-fits-all approach to electron collisions misses a lucky few that lead to an intense X-ray burst. Scientists thought there were too many electron-scattering ...
Plasma Physics
Feb 19, 2019
0
30
European astronomers have spotted a giant white-light flare on the ultracool L dwarf designated ULAS J224940.13-011236.9. The newly detected flare is one of the largest flares ever observed from an ultracool dwarf. The discovery ...
The Hawaii-based James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) has discovered a stellar flare 10 billion times more powerful than the Sun's solar flares, a history-making discovery that could unlock decades-old questions about the ...
Astronomy
Feb 12, 2019
6
531
This montage of 365 images shows the changing activity of our sun through the eyes of ESA's Proba-2 satellite during 2018. The images were taken by the satellite's SWAP camera, which works at extreme ultraviolet wavelengths ...
Space Exploration
Jan 28, 2019
0
24
On a hot day in August 1972 toward the end of the Vietnam War, dozens of naval mines off the coast of Hai Phong in North Vietnam began to explode without warning. In March 1989, a magnetic surge tripped circuits, knocking ...
Space Exploration
Jan 23, 2019
0
93
Using Major Atmospheric Gamma-ray Imaging Cherenkov (MAGIC) telescopes, an international group of astronomers has detected a fast, very high-energy (VHE) flare from the blazar BL Lacertae. The finding is detailed in a paper ...
A team of scientists has, for the first time, used a single, cohesive computer model to simulate the entire life cycle of a solar flare: from the buildup of energy thousands of kilometers below the solar surface, to the emergence ...
Astronomy
Jan 15, 2019
0
173
A massive stellar flare on a baby star has been spotted by University of Warwick astronomers, shedding light on the origins of potentially habitable exoplanets.
Astronomy
Dec 21, 2018
5
249
As on Earth, so in space. A four-satellite mission that is studying magnetic reconnection—the breaking apart and explosive reconnection of the magnetic field lines in plasma that occurs throughout the universe—has found ...
Plasma Physics
Dec 7, 2018
0
190
