All articles tagged with #magnetic avalanche
ESA's Solar Orbiter captured real-time footage showing a solar flare igniting through a rapid cascade of magnetic reconnection events inside a twisted flux rope, producing high-speed plasma rain and energy transfer that redefines flares as magnetic avalanches rather than a single eruption.
ESA's Solar Orbiter captured a large solar flare as a cascade of rapid reconnection events—an avalanche that builds from weak disturbances to a full eruption—producing rain-like plasma blobs and high-energy X-rays; four instruments provided a detailed, multi-instrument view, supporting avalanche models and improving understanding of energy transfer from magnetic fields to plasma and particles, with implications for space weather forecasting.
Caltech researchers have detected "Barkhausen noise" for the first time through quantum mechanical effects, representing an advance in fundamental physics. By studying a pink crystalline material called lithium holmium yttrium fluoride cooled to near absolute zero, the team observed that quantum tunneling and co-tunneling effects can lead to macroscopic changes in the magnetic orientations of electron spins, causing a magnetic avalanche. This discovery could have potential applications in creating quantum sensors and other electronic devices.