Scientists have captured the most detailed photos of the Sun’s surface yet, revealing mysterious solar processes with incredible resolution. The new high-resolution photos and timelapse videos captured by the Inouye Solar Telescope reveal “deformed boundaries of magnetic elements and ultra-fine scale stripes,” which are both heavily associated with Kelvin-Helmholtz Instability. A leading theory is that the Sun builds up magnetic energy through a process called “flux braiding,” in which magnetic field lines twist around each other, like a braid in hair. “Since the swirls seem to be happening constantly and everywhere on the Sun’s surface where there is a strong enough magnetic field, they could be the everyday ‘engine’ that keeps twisting the magnetic field lines and setting the whole process in motion,” NSO says. The team of researchers has just published its research, “Ubiquitous Kelvin–Helmholtz instabilities driving plasma mixing on the Sun,” in Nature.