Wind and ACE Detections of Extended Reconnection X-lines in Solar Wind Current Sheets

We are currently conducting a survey of 7 years of Wind and ACE data when both spacecraft were in the solar wind. We search for reconnection flow signatures embedded in solar wind current sheets. These large-scale current sheets are ideal for the studies of the large-scale properties of reconnection. Presently, we have completed 30% of our survey and have identified 27 events when both Wind and ACE were in the solar wind and detected essentially the same reconnection signatures, irrespective of how far apart the two spacecraft were. In 5 of these cases, we have evidence for an X-line extending more than 100 Earth radii. We are aware of no counter examples where one spacecraft detected the reconnection signature and the other did not. The large number of dual-spacecraft detections of reconnection flow with no counterexamples strongly indicates that reconnection is fundamentally large scale, not patchy.