An international collaboration that includes a College of Science astrophysicist has identified a phenomenon, likened to the quick-footed movements of an iconic cartoon predator, that proves a 19-year-old theory regarding how solar flares are created.
Understanding solar flares is important for predicting space weather and mitigating how it affects technology and human activities, said Vanessa Polito, a courtesy faculty member in the Department of Physics.
“Solar flares can release a tremendous amount of energy – 10 million times greater than the energy released from a volcanic eruption,” Polito said. “Flares and associated coronal mass ejections can drive beautiful aurorae but also severely affect our space environment, disrupt communications, pose hazards to astronauts and satellites in space, and affect the power grid on Earth.”
The “slip-running” reconnections of the sun’s magnetic field lines – the term was inspired by Wile E. Coyote’s mad scrambles after the Road Runner – were observed via NASA’s(Link is external) Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, or IRIS, a satellite used to study the sun’s atmosphere.
The observation of tiny, brilliant features in the atmosphere of the sun moving at unprecedented speeds – thousands of kilometers per second – opens the door to a deeper understanding of the creation of solar flares, the most powerful explosions in the solar system.
Guillaume Aulanier of the Paris Observatory, a collaborator on the research, developed the slip-running reconnection concept in 2005.
But measuring the speed of solar flare kernels had been elusive, Polito said. Kernels are small, bright regions within the larger flare ribbons that mark the location of magnetic field reconnection, areas known as footpoints where intense heat and energy release occur.
However, recently designed high-cadence observing programs, which capture images about every two seconds, revealed the slipping motions of kernels moving at speeds of up to 2,600 kilometers per second.
