The Sun's Fate May Be Altered by Tiny Magnetic Episodes.

ESA's Solar Orbiter has observed magnetic reconnection, a fundamental energy release mechanism in superheated gasses known as plasmas, taking place persistently on tiny scales in the Sun's corona. This may help solve the mystery of why the corona is much hotter than the Sun's surface. The observations suggest that even smaller and more frequent magnetic reconnections await discovery, and the goal is to observe these with even higher spatio-temporal resolution in the future. Solar Orbiter is a space mission of international collaboration between ESA and NASA.