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Data from a spacecraft orbiting Earth has revealed ripple structures in the termination shock and heliopause: shifting regions of space that mark one of the boundaries between the space inside the Solar System, and...interstellar space. ...Sun affects the space around it...solar wind, a constant supersonic flow of ionized plasma. It blows out past the planets and the Kuiper Belt, eventually petering out in the great emptiness between the stars. The point at which this flow falls below the speed at which sound waves can travel through the diffuse interstallar medium is called the termination shock, and the point at which...

A void left in the wake of a particularly powerful gust of solar wind caused the atmosphere of Mars to dramatically balloon outwards...As the MAVEN spacecraft in orbit around Mars recorded a sudden, sharp drop in solar particles when the wind passed on 26 December 2022, it simultaneously recorded a bizarre and startling change in the Martian atmosphere...The last time we saw this phenomenon was in 1999, when a sudden drop in the solar wind caused Earth's magnetosphere to swell outwards, increasing its volume 100-fold.

[IMAGE]Mars Disappearing Solar Wind: MAVEN Visualizations: A zoomed in view of MAVEN’s orbit during a period of low solar wind. Credits: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. View visualizations ›In December 2022, NASA’s MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN) mission observed the dramatic and unexpected "disappearance" of a stream of charged particles constantly emanating off the Sun, known as the solar wind. This was caused by a special type of solar event that was so powerful, it created a void in its wake as it traveled through the solar system.[IMAGE, 2:27 min video]The Day the Solar Wind Disappeared from Mars: Learn...

California’s buildout of wind and solar farms is exceeding the ability of its grid to handle all the electricity during periods of high production and low demand. The U.S. Energy Information Administration reported Monday that curtailments, which is when wind and solar farms are deliberately shut down, increased to peak levels in 2023. The California Independent System Operator, which operates the electricity grid for much of the state, has steadily curtailed the amount of electricity from wind and solar farms that flows through its system. The decreases appear to be situational, not a steady process, and are the result of...

In November 2021, the Parker Solar Probe skimmed within a more-than-hair-singeing 8.5 million kilometers (5.3 million miles) of the Sun, a feat enabling it to detect the fine structure of the solar wind as it gusted tons of charged particles out into the Solar System through a hole in the Sun's corona, or atmosphere.The probe's readings give us the closest look yet at how the fast solar wind is generated, suggesting that a specific type of magnetic reconnection is what drives this powerful force of nature, according to a team of physicists led by Stuart Bale of the University of...

The crack in the magnet field was created by a rare phenomenon called a co-rotating interaction region (CIR) from the Sun. CIRs are large-scale plasma structures generated in the low and mid-latitude regions of the heliosphere – the region surrounding the Sun that includes the solar magnetic field and the solar winds – when fast and slow-moving streams of solar wind interact. Like coronal mass ejections (CMEs), CIRs get flung out from the Sun towards Earth and can contain shockwaves and compressed magnetic fields that cause stormy space weather, which usually presents itself to us as pretty aurorae. This one...

Scientists may have found more evidence of how life on Earth came to be. The culprit? Solar wind. According to a new study, solar wind could be one of the forces responsible for helping provide the water molecules needed to create the Earth’s oceans, rivers, and lakes. The new idea could help us understand more about how life on Earth came to be, as well as whether or not other life might be somewhere out there in the rest of the universe.

Five billion years ago, the universe was Earth-less. It remained that way till a vast number of asteroids smashed together and compacted into a giant rocky orb. But that raises a question: The Earth's surface is 70% water, so where'd the liquid come from? A long-standing theory is that a water-rich class of asteroids, called carbonaceous or C-type asteroids, could've pelted the Earth during its creation and brought along water. There's a caveat though, and the C-type asteroids may be only half the story....

A GLOBAL MAGNETIC ANOMALY: On June 23rd, Earth’s quiet magnetic field was unexpectedly disturbed by a wave of magnetism that rippled around much of the globe. There was no solar storm or geomagnetic storm to cause the disturbance. So what was it?

If you venture too close to one of Earth's poles, you'll notice something rather strange happening to any gadgets using radio waves, satellite connections, or GPS. NASA is backing a range of initiatives to investigate the northern polar cusp, a funnel in space that's thought to be behind some of the weird space phenomena happening above the poles. This funnel, and the matching one at the South Pole, allows solar winds from the Sun to get right down to Earth's atmosphere – in other words, here the solar winds aren't reflected back out into space by the Earth's magnetic field,...

A similar process is playing out with the probe's speed: At the peak of its first two perihelions, the spacecraft traveled at about 213,200 mph (343,000 km/h), also breaking records, but future close approaches will see the Parker Solar Probe moving still faster. These close grazes are anxious times for scientists and engineers on the mission because the spacecraft is out of communication with Earth for several days before and after each perihelion. The radio silence is designed to let the spacecraft focus on keeping its instruments tucked safely behind the thick shield that protects them from the incredible heat...

People on Earth who've gotten sunburns are familiar with the sun's powerful rays — but the moon suffers from sunburn, too. Some regions of the lunar surface exhibit a distinctive pattern of darker and lighter swirls. Using NASA's ARTEMIS mission — which stands for Acceleration, Reconnection, Turbulence and Electrodynamics of the Moon's Interaction with the Sun — astronomers have revealed new clues about the origin of these swirls. The sun releases a constant flow of charged particles known as solar wind into space. While Earth's natural magnetic field deflects solar-wind particles, the moon has a weaker magnetic field, leaving some areas of...

Voyager 2 has entered interstellar space. The spacecraft slipped out of the huge bubble of particles that encircles the solar system on November 5, becoming the second ever human-made craft to cross the heliosphere, or the boundary between the sun and the stars.Coming in second place is no mean achievement. Voyager 1 became the first spacecraft to exit the solar system in 2012. But that craft’s plasma instrument stopped working in 1980, leaving scientists without a direct view of the solar wind, hot charged particles constantly streaming from the sun (SN Online: 9/12/13). Voyager 2’s plasma sensors are still working,...

A massive "hole" on the surface of the sun has unleashed a strong solar wind that scientists say may amp up the northern lights in some areas of the U.S. and could disrupt satellite communications over the next few days. Data from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory revealed a vast region where the sun's magnetic field has opened up, creating a gap in the sun's outer atmosphere, called the corona. This region, also known as a coronal hole, allows charged particles to escape and flow toward Earth in an increased solar wind. As a result, the U.S. Space Weather Prediction Center...

The Parker Solar Probe is the size of a small car and named for Prof. Eugene Parker, a 90-year-old American astrophysicist who in 1958 discovered the solar wind. It’s the first time that NASA has named a spacecraft after a living person. The Parker probe... will make a beeline for Venus for the first of seven flybys. Each gravity assist will slow the craft down and reshape its orbit (see below), so it later can pass extremely close to the Sun. The first flyby is slated for late September. ...NASA typically will fly by a planet to increase the spacecraft’s speed...

GEOMAGNETIC STORMS UNDERWAY NOW: Geomagnetic storms are underway on Sept. 28th as a fast-moving stream of solar wind buffets Earth's magnetic field. With storm levels reaching category G2, Northern Lights have been photographed in the USA as far south as Wisconsin and Washington. NOAA forecasters say there is a 60% to 80% chance of continued storms during the next 24 hours. Geomagnetic storms are underway on Sept. 28th as a fast-moving stream of solar wind buffets Earth's magnetic field. With storm levels reaching category G2, Northern Lights have been photographed in the USA as far south as Wisconsin and Washington....

Venus has an “electric wind” strong enough to remove the components of water from its upper atmosphere, which may have played a significant role in stripping Earth’s twin planet of its oceans, according to new results from ESA’s (European Space Agency) Venus Express mission by NASA-funded researchers. “It’s amazing, shocking,” said Glyn Collinson, a scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “We never dreamt an electric wind could be so powerful that it can suck oxygen right out of an atmosphere into space. This is something that has to be on the checklist when we go looking...

A 'gigantic hole' in the sun's atmosphere, hovering over the solar north pole, has been photographed by a space telescope. The dark spot, which covers almost a quarter of the sun, is a large 'coronal hole' — a dark, low density region of the sun’s outermost atmosphere, the corona. It was spotted by the European Space Agency/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft between 13 and 18 July, during which time it was spewing out material including solar wind into space. While the hole looks devoid of solar activity, it was in fact releasing violent blasts of solar wind and...

Earth has a magnetic field and Venus does not -- a crucial distinction when assessing the effects of the sun on each planet. As the solar wind rushes outward from the sun at nearly a million miles per hour, it is stopped about 44,000 miles away from Earth when it collides with the giant magnetic envelope that surrounds the planet called the magnetosphere. Most of the solar wind flows around the magnetosphere, but in certain circumstances it can enter the magnetosphere to create a variety of dynamic space weather effects on Earth. Venus has no such protective shield, but it...

Enlarge Image Light show. Auroral displays reveal the interaction between the solar wind particles and nitrogen molecules in Earth's upper atmosphere. Credit: NASA Scientists trying to confirm a long-standing model of atmospheric physics have inadvertently shaken one of the foundations of the field. New tests show that the model, used to interpret energy emissions in Earth's upper atmosphere, is seriously flawed. The findings should help researchers build a better picture of how our planet interacts with solar radiation and the particle stream called the solar wind, and they may give a similar boost to studies of the atmosphere on...