Mitch,
Jim, (By the way, the secondary instability work is Dahlburg, KLIMCHUK, and Antiochos!!!) Ooops!
So maybe it is possible that the place most favoured by the corona to relieve its stresses is at the base. Or maybe there
Could be.
is another possibility, that reconnections in the corona send jets of energetic particles downwards, where they boil the chromospheric material and send that material upwards. In this case, we might first observe what is happening at the chromosphere, because of the much greater densities there -- has this been ruled out?
As far as I am aware, this is a viable possibility. I have simulated the situation where some of the energy released in the corona goes into nonthermal particles (the rest going into direct heating), but the particle beam produces "gentle" evaporation, not "explosive" evaporation, to use the terms of the flare people. I believe Trae Winter and Piet Martens may have worked on this, too.
By the way, I do NOT believe that observations necessarily point to low altitude heating. My view is that observations are consistent with both low altitude and high altitude heating. Perhaps this should be a topic for Loops IV.
Jim
Cheers Mitch _______________________________________________ Loops mailing list Loops@solar.physics.montana.edu https://mithra.physics.montana.edu/mailman/listinfo/loops