A Solar Eruption in 5 Steps

  • Released Wednesday, April 26, 2017
View full credits

Music credit: Prism Mystery by Donn Wilkerson

Complete transcript available.

Watch this video on the NASA Goddard YouTube channel.

Scientists from Durham University in the United Kingdom and NASA now propose that a universal mechanism can explain the whole spectrum of solar eruptions. They used 3-D computer simulations to demonstrate that a variety of eruptions can theoretically be thought of as the same kind of event, only in different sizes and manifested in different ways. Their work is summarized in a paper published in Nature on April 26, 2017.

Computer simulation of a filament eruption. Field lines are colored to depict the various magnetic field regions: The filament/flux rope (yellow). forms beneath the central arcade (blue) before erupting. The semi-transparent shading shows current density in the plane.

Credit: Peter F. Wyper (Durham University); Spiro K. Antiochos & C. Richard DeVore (NASA GSFC)

Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

This page was originally published on Wednesday, April 26, 2017.
This page was last updated on Wednesday, May 3, 2023 at 1:47 PM EDT.

Series

This visualization can be found in the following series: