NASA has observed a new type of magnetic explosion in the hot upper reaches of the sun's atmosphere. Scientists have previously seen the explosive snap and realignment of tangled magnetic field lines on the sun -- a process known as magnetic reconnection -- but never one that had been triggered by a nearby eruption. “This was the first observation of an external driver of magnetic reconnection,” Abhishek Srivastava, solar scientist at Indian Institute of Technology (BHU), in Varanasi, India, said in a statement. However, this new explosion-driven type -- called forced reconnection -- had never been seen directly, though it was first theorized 15 years ago. GET THE FOX NEWS APPThe scientists' new observations were just published in the Astrophysical Journal.

Source: Fox News December 18, 2019 00:22 UTC