There is something almost dramatic about a star that tries to hurl a billion tonnes of magnetised plasma into space and simply cannot pull it off. It builds, it strains, it rises and then it stops as if it never happened. a bit like me trying to do press-ups! Scientists call these events failed eruptions, and while they have been observed before, nobody has fully understood why they occur. A new study from the Center for Astrophysics at Harvard & Smithsonian has now provided the most detailed answer yet. Image artefacts (diffraction spikes and vertical streaks) appearing in a CCD image of a major solar flare due to the excess incident radiation (Credit : NASA Goddard Space Flight Centre) In March 2024, the Sun produced an intense solar flare from a large and magnetically complex active region.…