Explore: Magnetic Reconnection

Magnetic reconnection is a physical process occurring in electrically conducting plasmas, in which the magnetic topology is rearranged and magnetic energy

or loss of magnetic flux, particularly its southward magnetic field component, through magnetic reconnection with the interplanetary magnetic field. In

conditions for ideal MHD break down, allowing magnetic reconnection that releases the stored energy from the magnetic field. In ideal MHD, the resistive term

from the boundary between Earth's magnetic field down into the atmosphere. In a process known as magnetic reconnection, the field lines violently reconfigure

magnetosphere, causing the plasma to slip past. This results in magnetic reconnection, and as the magnetic field lines break and reconnect, solar wind particles

allowing the magnetic field to "reconnect" to other magnetic poles and release heat and wave energy in the process. Magnetic reconnection is hypothesized

heating. Magnetic reconnection: when plasma gets dense, its electromagnetic properties can change, which can lead to magnetic reconnection. Reconnection helps

mission is designed to gather information about the microphysics of magnetic reconnection, energetic particle acceleration, and turbulence⁠ — processes that

until his retirement in 1984. Dungey introduced the concept of magnetic reconnection, a mechanism that was not initially accepted but is now recognized

tail on the night-side. Ultimately some tail plasma can separate ("magnetic reconnection"); some blobs ("plasmoids") are squeezed downstream and are carried