Magnetic reconnection could be the Universe's favorite way to make things explode. It operates anywhere magnetic fields pervade space—which is to say almost everywhere. In the cores of galaxies, magnetic reconnection sparks explosions visible billions of light-years away. On the sun, it causes solar flares as powerful as a million atomic bombs. At Earth, it powers magnetic storms and auroras. It's ubiquitous. The problem is, researchers can't explain it.
The basics are clear enough. Magnetic lines of force cross, cancel, reconnect and—Bang! Magnetic energy is unleashed, with charged-particles flying off near the speed of light. But how? How does the simple act of criss-crossing magnetic field lines trigger such a ferocious explosion?
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2015/10mar_mms/
[Also Covered By]: http://phys.org/news/2015-03-nasa-magnetic-explosions.html
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 13 2015, @04:55PM
This is about the MMS [nasa.gov] mission that just successfully launched. I got to see it up close and personal for quite a while. It is pretty cool, as is the mission concept.
(Score: 1) by Pr. L Muishkin on Friday March 13 2015, @05:24PM
Aliens! as an explanation.
(Score: 2) by Alfred on Friday March 13 2015, @06:27PM
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 13 2015, @05:47PM
The basics are clearly NOT understood or it would have opened the door to understanding it. When someone says they understand the basics but after all these years have no idea at all, well you missed something earlier. Probably some fixed idea that is wrong but everyone thinks must be that way, and all authorities that you so faithfully trust says so...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday March 13 2015, @06:03PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 13 2015, @07:41PM
Yes, after all these years we don't understand anything. We can build huge, impressive tokamaks that squeeze the fuck out of ionized particles and use and do all sorts of really cool plasma physics shit with magnetic fields, but we don't understand anything.
You don't know fuck about how science and technology works, do you? What, are you like 12 years old with all this "authorities that you so faithfully trust" and adolescent "don't trust authority" bullshit?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 14 2015, @03:24AM
One of my friends has a PhD in physics, something to do with lasers and weather forecasting.
One day, he took it upon himself to explain to me that I should not trust anybody who says AGW is real, because he's an expert on the topic and I'm not, and anybody who disagrees with him is simply an evil commie or socialist who's trying to erode his freedoms. (I kid you not.)
Later, he told me that as a species we have no idea how magnets work, therefore (his particular version of) God.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by zeigerpuppy on Saturday March 14 2015, @03:45AM
Had a long discussion with a fundamentalist Christian the other day.
Damn frustrating but I try to be civil.
The basic issue was that he refused to understand the difference between evidence and faith. I tried to sum it up by saying that evidence is those things which you can demonstrate by observation and show to others to form an impression (hypothesis) of what is going on. And that the same evidential method can refute and refine ideas. He said his radical belief in Jesus is evidence of God's existence.
It was impossible to get further. He actually believed that all of science is a conspiracy to get people away from the true moral way. It astounds me how blind we can be as a species sometimes.
He was also a climate change skeptic. We agreed that the world is not going in a good direction because of supra-national powerful interests that control global energy supply and finance; but his limp response was "Jesus will come again an fix it". To which I politely said, "get off your arse and take some fucking responsibility, the big man in the sky ain't goin to get us out of this mess".
He was extreme, no doubt, but sums up why religious zealots are such a drag on the rest of humanity and can justify just about anything by their fantasies.
Wake up people!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by fritsd on Friday March 13 2015, @06:13PM
Maybe it has something to with phase transitions that are not allowed to "break the rules" of symmetry?
I'm just talking out of my arse here, but the reference to "magnetic lines of force cross (...)" reminded me both of the film Ghostbusters, and also of a phenomenon from solid-state chemistry, which I forgot almost all about.. (just like Ghostbusters in fact)
Best to show with a picture since I can't draw and anyways I couldn't show it on soylentnews..
I found a picture on Google: http://ej.iop.org/images/0295-5075/54/3/354/Full/img19.gif [iop.org]
If you look at the graph on the left, follow the third and fourth line from the top with your eyes for increasing values of q:
there's a transition at q approx 0.35 and freq approx. 3.5 reciproke cm where you would expect the third and fourth line to cross (never mind what their *meaning* is, but you'd expect to see a continuation of two smooth lines).
But they don't.
They're not allowed to; that would break symmetry rules.
So at the transition point itself, there's a very weird "evasion" phase after which line #3 (counted from the top) will follow the curve that you'd expect the increasing line #4 to follow, and line #4 will follow the curve that you'd expect the decreasing line #3 to follow.
And for a bit higher q, the same for lines #2 and #3, and a bit higher lines #1 and #2.
I vaguely remember the reasons to be quantum mechanical in nature (probably Pauli exclusion principle?), however the graph is drawn from macroscopic, measurable phenomena.
And in this example; don't you have one of the Maxwell equations that says magnetism within a thingy (any thingy) is 0? Wasn't there a surface integral or something?
Let's see how good soylentnews' UTF-8 support is..
Gauss' law for magnetism:
∮ B ∙ dA = 0
So the system has states where the magnetism vanishes. So what happens if you *approach* such a state?
Forgive me if this all didn't make much sense..
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Alfred on Friday March 13 2015, @06:39PM
I didn't like EM Theory but I remember that when you have something pointy that the field behavior is different. Of course every geometry is different but the field lines would concentrate at the pointy part or something.
In a more universal approach, change is the only thing that remains the same but nothing likes to change too fast. Change to fast and things break, which can look really cool or be very painful.
(Score: 2) by TLA on Friday March 13 2015, @06:24PM
Actually, just shut up and enjoy the show. :)
Excuse me, I think I need to reboot my horse. - NCommander
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 13 2015, @06:35PM
Well everyone knows you're not to cross the streams, else BOOM!
Egon Spengler: There's something very important I forgot to tell you.
Peter Venkman: What?
Spengler: Don't cross the streams.
Venkman: Why?
Spengler: It would be bad.
Venkman: I'm fuzzy on the whole good/bad thing. What do you mean, "bad"?
Spengler: Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light.
Ray Stantz: Total protonic reversal!
Venkman: Right. That's bad. Okay. All right. Important safety tip. Thanks, Egon.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tibman on Friday March 13 2015, @06:44PM
Egon Spengler: I have a radical idea. The door swings both ways. We could reverse the particle flow through the gate.
Peter Venkman: How?
Spengler: We'll cross the streams.
Venkman: Excuse me, Egon, you said crossing the streams was bad.
Ray Stantz: Cross the streams...
Venkman: You're gonna endanger us, you're gonna endanger our client. The nice lady who paid us in advance before she became a dog.
Spengler: Not necessarily. There's definitely a very slim chance we'll survive. [team ponders]
Venkman: I love this plan! I'm excited to be a part of it. Let's do it!
Winston Zeddmore: This job is definitely not worth eleven-five a year!
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 1) by theronb on Saturday March 14 2015, @12:53AM
How do we make it into a weapon?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 14 2015, @01:05AM
this makes its way into military application once unlocked?