Insights into Solar Flares from Laboratory Experiments

Researchers at Caltech have simulated solar flares in a lab to study the process by which these massive explosions blast potentially harmful energetic particles and X-rays into the cosmos. They discovered that solar corona loops are composed of fractally braided strands, and when too much current tries to pass through a loop, it develops a kink and individual strands start to break, leading to the generation of energetic particles and X-ray bursts. The team plans to explore how separate plasma loops can merge and reorganize into different configurations to learn whether there are also energy burst events during this type of interaction.