Two dark areas of plasma, cooler than the surrounding fluid, dance and intertwine above the sun’s surface. Plasma, a rarefied gas made up of ions, is an electrically conductive fluid, shaped here by the magnetic field of the sun. Note how the strands pass material back and forth along the magnetic field lines. This timelapse video, captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, takes place over the course of a day and is captured in the extreme ultraviolet range.
Dancing Plasma
