Having a blast? Scientists capture Sun’s failed solar eruption

By Dean Murray

Space scientists have captured the Sun failing to have a blast.

A team of researchers recorded one of the most detailed views ever of a failed solar eruption, a powerful blast from the Sun that never broke free.

In March 2024, an intense solar flare sent a plume of dense gas rising from the Sun’s surface, but the eruption slowed, stalled and collapsed back.

“This strong flare should have produced a big eruption,” said lead author Tingyu Gou, astronomer at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO), part of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. “Instead, we saw that the eruption stalled and collapsed shortly after its initiation.”

Using spacecraft from NASA and the European Space Agency alongside ground-based telescopes, scientists tracked the event across multiple wavelengths.

They found that magnetic field lines were reconnecting in different regions at once. While lower reconnection pushed the eruption upwards, a second process above weakened it.

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“That upper reconnection weakened the forces that were driving the eruption, which helped to shut it down,” said Katharine Reeves, astronomer at SAO and co-author on the paper.

Strong overlying magnetic fields also acted like a cage, preventing the eruption from escaping.

The findings could explain why stellar eruptions are rarely observed beyond the Sun, suggesting many collapse before they can travel into space.

“By watching this failed eruption on our own Sun in detail, we gain a window into how flares and eruptions may work throughout the galaxy,” said Gou. “This work can, in turn, help us understand the physical mechanisms of successful eruptions and space weather environments of distant stars and planets.”