The Sun has been the ultimate source of power, and scientists have longg been trying to harness this energy as they look to build fusion r...
The Sun has a secret method by which its flare outbursts can produce enough energy in minutes that can power the world for 20,000 years. Scientists have now cracked the solar mystery that they have been working on for nearly six decades.
The explosive process is called magnetic reconnection, which triggers solar flares. Scientists say that a better understanding of this violent process could enable insights into nuclear fusion and provide better predictions of particle storms from the Sun that can affect Earth-orbiting technology.
AN EXPLOSIVE SECRET :- Scientists working with Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission, or MMS, have developed a theory that explains how the most explosive type of magnetic reconnection called fast reconnection occurs and why it happens at a consistent speed. According to Nasa, magnetic reconnection is a process that occurs in plasma, sometimes called the fourth state of matter.
Plasma forms when gas has been energized enough to break apart its atoms, leaving a motley of negatively charged electrons and positively charged ions existing side-by-side. This energetic, fluid-like material is exquisitely sensitive to magnetic fields. "We finally understand what makes this type of magnetic reconnection so fast. We now have a theory to explain it fully," Yi-Hsin Liu, a physics professor at Dartmouth College said.
WHY SO EXPLOSIVE?
The study published in the journal Nature's Communications Physics shows how fast reconnection occurs specifically in collisionless plasmas a type of plasma whose particles are spread out enough that the individual particles don't collide with one another.
The new theory states that the process is sped up by the hall effect, which is described as an interactioon between magnetic fields and electric currents. During fast magnetic reconnection, charged particles in a plasma namely ions and electrons stop moving as a group. As the ions and electrons begin moving separately, they give rise to the Hall effect, creating an unstable energy vacuum where reconnection happens.
Pressure from the magnetic fields around the energy vacuum causes the vacuum to implode, which quickly releases immense amounts of energy at a predictable rate. "Ultimately, if we can understand how magnetic reconnection operates, then we can better predict events that can impact us on Earth, like geomagnetic storms and solar flares," Giles said. "And if we can understand how reconnection is initiated, it will also help energy research because researchers could better control magnetic fields in fusion devices.
" The team is now planning to test thee theory using four spacecraft flying around Earth in a pyramid formation to study magnetic reconnection in collisionless plasmas.
