A new study published in Nature Astronomy
[1] marks the first time researchers have captured the full lifecycle of a putative nanoflare – from bright origins to blistering demise.
Nanoflares are tiny eruptions on the Sun, one-billionth the size of normal solar flares. Eugene Parker – of Parker Solar Probe fame
[2] – first predicted them in 1972 to solve a major puzzle: the coronal heating problem.
A close-up of one of the loop brightenings studied in the article. Each inset frame zooms in to the selected region in the frame to its left. The frame on the far right is the most zoomed in, showing the putative nanoflare. (NASA/SDO/IRIS/Shah Bahauddin)