© Charles Chandler

 

You said: "A flare that occurs above the surface is just a big spark that flashes through a near-perfect vacuum." Doesn't it also shoot a lot of iron "steam" up into the corona or chromosphere, where some of it cools and falls back to the surface, while the rest continues to arc back to the surface at high velocity? I'll have to look to see if you cover that in some other section. I suppose all that circulation of iron may not have much overall influence in your model though. Would it tend to produce more flares? Or would it have deeper effects maybe?