For many years it has been debated whether the quiet solar corona is heated
by nanoflares and microflares or by magnetic waves. In this paper TRACE da
ta of events with energies in the range 10(23)-10(26) ergs are investigated
. A new stable and objective statistical technique is proposed to determine
the index, -gamma, of a power-law relation between the frequency of the ev
ents and their energy. We find that gamma is highly dependent on the form o
f the line-of-sight depth assumed to determine the event energies. If a con
stant line-of-sight depth is assumed, then gamma lies between 2.4 and 2.6;
however, if a line-of-sight depth of the form (Ae(/)k(2))(1/2) is assumed,
where A(e) is event area and k is a constant, then gamma lies between 2.0 a
nd 2.1. In all cases the value of gamma is greater than 2 and therefore imp
lies that the events with the lowest energies dominate the heating of the q
uiet solar corona. Moreover, there are strong indications that there is ins
ufficient energy from events with nanoflare energies (i.e., energies in the
range 10(24)-10(27) ergs) to explain the total energy losses in the quiet
corona. However, our results do not rule out the possibility that events wi
th picoflare energies (i.e., energies in the range 10(21)-10(24) ergs) heat
the quiet corona. From analysis of the spatial distribution of the events,
we find that events are mainly confined to regions with the brightest EUV
emission, which are presumably the regions connected to the strongest magne
tic fields. Indeed, just 16% of the quiet corona possesses such events.