What causes solar flares?
from Zach ANSWER: Solar flares occur when energy stored up in the sun’s magnetic field is suddenly released, or converted from magnetic energy into heat energy and motion. The churning motions (convection) in the sun’s atmosphere twist up the magnetic field — think of it like twisting up a rubber band — if the twisting gets too much, the magnetic field lines break and join up with much less twist (we call it “reconnect”) heating up the gas in that vicinity to very high temperatures as it does so. That event is a solar flare. Dr. Jeffrey Hughes Professor of Astronomy Boston University Solar Wind QUESTION: What is a “solar wind”? In ancient civilizations were auroras thought to be signs from their gods? ANSWER: The solar wind is a very small portion of the ionized atmosphere of the sun that is blown away from the sun by its tremendous temperatures. The outer atmosphere of the sun is called the corona and its temperature is millions of degrees. So some of the atoms in the corona are mov
