What role does electricity play in space phenomena?

[Ionic]

Magnetic reconnection is a process that can occur almost anywhere that a magnetic field is found. In a reconnection event, the magnetic field lines are squeezed together somehow and spontaneously reconfigure themselves. This releases energy.

Somehow? Then where does the energy come from?

The new Cluster measurements reveal the electric field on the scale of a few hundred kilometres. "This is the first ever measurement of this term," says Paul Henderson, from University College London's Mullard Space Science Laboratory, UK, who led the investigation.

WOw! What would happen if ESA sent out not four but 10's, 100's or even 1000's of small sensor satelitles to mesure just how big these electric fields are? Around Earth and in the greater solar system.

When the field reconnects in this region, it triggers jets of energetic particles that can cause auroral lights but can also damage satellites.

So these "events" have real power?


So would it be a fair assumption to say that any body (with a magnetosphere) in the whole of the universe that orbits around a star (a body radiating "solar wind'), would have these "reconection" phenomena? What happens to any body without this magnetospheric protection?

Just what role does electricity play in space? Does it just make pretty lights around the poles of planets? Or is it much larger than that?

linky here ww.esa.int/esaCP/SEMZN9Q11ZE_index_0.html

[tusenfem]

Welcome back Sol/Starboy

Please, first read up on plasma physics, e.g. Kivelson & Russell "Introduction to Space Physics." Should not be too difficult, not even for you.