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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 August 2017
Reconnection is clearly observed at the terrestrial magnetopause but seldom in the simple geometry originally proposed. Most often reconnection is patchy, forming tubes of twisted flux. The passage of one of these twisted tubes has been called a flux transfer event. Similar twisted tubes, or flux ropes, are formed at Venus by velocity shear. These tubes become so highly twisted that they become kink unstable. The presence of the kink instability suggests a way of creating compound flux ropes as have been postulated to be necessary to explain photospheric magnetic structure.