Magnetic Tangles Drive Solar Wind

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https://eos.org/articles/magnetic-tangles-drive-solar-wind

By atthew R. Francis, Eos/AGU. 

Excerpt: Though the effects of solar wind are well documented, what causes it has been a mystery for more than 50 years. Now, thanks to a solar close-up, some researchers think the energy behind the flow of particles comes from the Sun’s own magnetic fields snapping together. The process, known as reconnection, may illuminate not only solar wind but winds from other stars as well as the behavior of comets and planetary atmospheres. In part to solve the solar wind mystery—and perhaps learn ways to spot solar storms before they form—researchers developed NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, which launched in 2018 and has been flying in ever-closer orbits to the Sun. ...Reconnection occurs in plasmas when magnetic fields pointing in opposite directions cancel out, rapidly dumping their energy into the surrounding electrons and ions. A simplified picture would be taking two bar magnets pointed in opposite directions and letting them snap together: The noise of their collision is analogous to reconnection energy release. In the solar corona, this process happens when the magnetic fields that turned back toward the Sun come into proximity with those stretching out into the solar system, and the energy released is dumped into the charged particles that make up the solar wind.... For GSS Energy Flow chapter 4.

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