Drake, J. F., M. Swisdak, H. Che, and M. A. Shay, Electron acceleration from contracting magnetic islands during reconnection, Nature, 443, 553-556 (2006) (ADS)
(click on the image for a larger version)
Date: 2009 February 04
Update: 2019 November 21
Is magnetic reconnection inherently 2D or can it be truly 3D? This cartoon shows a thick current sheet chock-filled with magnetic islands. Their elongation means something theoretically; a well-known Liu cartoon's bubbles are round and represent turbulence, rather than the processes modeled here. The elongated bubbles, according to the theory, accelerate electrons by first-order Fermi acceleration, rather than second-order.