The tiny physics behind immense cosmic eruptions
Zack Savitsky writes: During fleeting fits, the sun occasionally hurls a colossal amount of energy into space. Called solar flares, these eruptions last for mere minutes, and they can trigger catastrophic blackouts and dazzling auroras on Earth. But our leading mathematical theories of how these flares work fail to predict the strength and speed of what we observe. At the heart of these outbursts is a mechanism that converts magnetic energy into powerful blasts of light and particles. This transformation…