Solar flares: a “battle” between a rope and a cage magnetic?

Photo AFP

AFP

Wednesday, 7 February 2018 15:24

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Wednesday, 7 February 2018 15:24

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French researchers announced on Wednesday that having achieved “a new step” for the early forecasting of solar flares, some of which are likely to have serious consequences by disrupting our systems, electrical, electronic, and our communications.

According to them, the rash is the result of a “fight between a rope and magnetic cage” consisting also of magnetic fields. Formulas imaged to describe phenomena that are still poorly understood.

The atmosphere of our star is swept by the storms of many sorts. These phenomena, which occur in the crown, the area that is the outer most of the Sun, are caused by a reconfiguration of the brutal and sudden of the solar magnetic field.

They are characterized by an intense release of energy in the form of emission of radiation and various particles and, sometimes, by the ejection of a huge magnetic bubble of plasma (ionized gas) which can do big damage if it touches the Ground.

In 2014, a team of researchers, led by astrophysicist Tahar Amari, director of research CNRS at the École polytechnique, discovered that just before the solar flares, he formed a rope “magnetic” in the atmosphere of the star.

The energy of this “rope”, made of “magnet wires tangled”, as the “hemp twisted”, increases as its emergence at the surface of the Sun, according to scientists, for whom this rope is the origin of the phenomenon eruption.

In a new study published Wednesday in the journal Nature, the team announced that it had made another discovery: the rope is said to develop within a “cage magnetic multilayer”, “to the point of wanting to get out of this kind of protection “maternal” by engaging in a kind of struggle”, said to AFP Tahar Amari.

“Sometimes, it is the cage, who wins and despite the onslaught of the rope, it is destroyed only partially, making it impossible for the ejection of a magnetic bubble, but allowing the emission of radiation powerful.

“Sometimes, it is the rope that earns and she manages to destroy really the cage, giving the ejection of the magnetic bubble”, he adds. The power of this varies and in some cases, it can be dangerous for the Earth.

A “single phenomenon” might as well explain all of the solar flares.

The scientists have based their new work on the study of an eruption of solar material that occurred on October 24, 2014 and was observed by the solar observatory SDO (Solar Dynamics Observatory) of NASA.

To find the phenomenon at the origin of this eruption, the researchers actually turning their models of calculation of magnetic fields, by injecting the data from the solar observatory.

During this eruption, there had been no ejection of a bubble of plasma. But “if the cage had been lower, it would have been a”.

Solar eruptions are to be feared, because they may affect on-board electronics in satellites and disrupt navigation systems. They are likely to affect communications, power grids, transport, but also the living organisms (effect of radiation), etc

The scientific community is seeking to develop forecasting models, such as the weather on earth, to limit their impact.