A laboratory experiment reveals a mechanism for coronal heating
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A study on laboratory modeling of magnetic reconnection—one possible mechanism for heating the solar corona—was published in Physical Review Letters on October 20, 2026.
The authors demonstrated for the first time in a laboratory that the Rayleigh–Taylor instability can self-organize antiparallel magnetic fields and trigger their reconnection. The electrons heated to approximately 70.8 ± 6.5 eV.
The results link this mechanism to the nanoflare hypothesis, but do not prove that it is what explains the corona’s high temperature.
Image: Luc Viatour CC BY-SA 3.0 · License
Translation editor: Ловушкин А.
Source: journals.aps.org ↗