China Uses Powerful Lasers to Recreate Magnetic Explosions on the Sun’s Surface

For the first time, Chinese researchers used powerful lasers to recreate magnetic explosions on the sun's surface, South China Morning Post reported.

The team of researchers stimulated a turbulent magnetic reconnection in which the Sun's anti-parallel magnetic field collide, beak, and realign dramatically. Thus, this unleashes a huge amount of radiation into space, and the particles from the solar flares can reach the Earth.

The researchers reproduced the complex reconnection process in the laboratory and demonstrated the changes during solar flares observed by telescope missions.

Laboratory simulation is preferred because it is more controllable and saves researchers time. Moreover, this will let them build more reliable models and predict when and where magnetic reconnection will occur.

This new study showed a larger interaction for turbulence as well as doubling the number of lasers and the amount of aluminum foil.

With the recreated facility, they can now shoot laser beams more than the total output of power grids for various laser-plasma interaction experiments.

Not a First

This isn't the first time the researchers did this because, over ten years ago, they also performed a toned-down version of the experiment. In that experiment, they could scale key parameters to ensure they are compatible with an actual solar flare on the Sun.

Also, they recreated magnetic reconnection by employing two high-power lasers that trigger an aluminum foil and generate plasma bubbles. The magnetic fields collided when the bubbles expanded, resulting in magnetic reconnection.

Solar Magnetic Reconnection

Magnetic reconnection happens due to the collision of curved magnetic field lines. Magnetic reconnection causes solar flares and the most violent solar storms.

This happens when the magnetic fields break and realign with one another, which causes a huge amount of energy to be released.

It can release a million times the energy put in by the Sun. The process is also called magnetic reconnection. Sometimes, it also occurs on stars, but it is difficult to observe because we don't have telescopes out in space to see it.

This is when the Earth is in the middle of a storm. The solar plasma caused by the magnetic reconnection is a big storm. It can reach the Earth in just three days. When it reaches the Earth, it can cause a lot of problems. For instance, the power grids can fail, and it can disrupt GPS and other satellite-based communications systems. When the magnetosphere is disturbed, the astronauts cannot go to space.

There are other problems that come with this solar flare. Magnetic fields can be harmful to astronauts and satellites. It also creates harmful conditions that can make a living on the Earth difficult to do. They are harmful because they interfere with the radio and TV signals. Solar flares can destroy satellite-based communications and even cause radio blackouts.