The Role of Magnetic Reconnection in Solar Activity

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We argue that magnetic reconnection plays the determining role in many of the various manifestations of solar activity. In particular, it is the trigger mechanism for the most energetic of solar events, coronal mass ejections and eruptive flares. We propose that in order to obtain explosive eruptions, magnetic reconnection in the corona must have an ``on-off'' nature, and show that reconnection in a sheared multi-polar field configuration does have this property. Numerical simulation results which support this model are presented, and implications for coronal mass ejections/eruptive flare prediction are discussed.