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Not at all a flare/CME cartoon, but one of great historical significance. The mechanism represented here ("dynamical dissipation") as an explanation of coronal heating - still controversial, of course - spawned a great deal of research activity that continues to the present. The basic idea is that random motions in the photosphere wrap and twist coronal field lines until they undergo internal neutral-point reconnection within a flux tube. But... how do we know that the motions in the photosphere, or deep below it where the field can be stressed best, are "random"? In active regions and in filament channels, where flares and CMEs occur, there is a high degree of organization. Thus this problem may only apply to (how can the Archivist say it politely) unimportant aspects of the coronal field.
October 10, 2008