Scientists at the University of St Andrews discovered that particles in solar flares can reach temperatures 6.5 times higher than previously thought, with ions soaring past 60 million degrees. This breakthrough helps solve a decades-old mystery in solar physics.
The key? Magnetic reconnection.
This process heats ions far more than electrons, a pattern seen in space and simulations but never linked to solar flares until now. The team found that ions and electrons don’t always share the same temperature, and this difference can last for minutes during a flare. This explains why solar flare spectral lines have appeared unusually wide since the 1970s, a puzzle once blamed on turbulence. The new ion temperature fits the data perfectly.
