SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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: 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?