About Miniature Plasma Loops:
- These miniature loops are about 3,000–4,000 kilometers long and have a width of less than 100 kilometers.
- These are so small and short-lived, that they have stayed hidden until now.
- They hold clues to one of the Sun’s deepest mysteries --how it stores and unleashes magnetic energy.
- They offer a new window into how magnetic energy is stored and released in the solar atmosphere on small scales.
- Among the most intriguing features of the Sun’s outer layer are coronal loops, arc-like beautiful structures of hot plasma that glow at a temperature over a million degrees.
- While these large loops in the solar corona, or outer atmosphere, have long been studied, scientists are now also paying attention to miniature counterparts of these loops.
- This makes them challenging to study, as they stay hidden in the lower layers of the Sun's atmosphere and are mostly unresolved by earlier telescopes.
