The swirls could also fuel the buildup of the sun’s magnetic energy, which drives solar flares and coronal mass ejections. Scientists have long believed that the sun builds up stores of magnetic energy through “flux braiding,” when magnetic field lines twist together. Swirls occurring along the edges of magnetic regions across the solar surface could twist the fields together, the researchers realized. “There is a strong consensus within the solar physics community that unlocking global solar behavior begins with understanding these micro-scales. The telescope observations very closely matched advanced computer simulations that were also run by the team during the study.