What Solar Feature Can Increase Solar Wind

What is solar wind?

This is an creative person's concept of the World'due south global magnetic field, with the bow stupor. Earth is in the middle of the paradigm, surrounded by its magnetic field, represented by regal lines. The bow shock is the blue crescent on the correct. Many energetic particles in the solar wind, represented in gilt, are deflected by Earth'south magnetic "shield". (Prototype credit: Walt Feimer (HTSI)/NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Epitome Lab )

The solar wind streams plasma and particles from the sun out into space. Though the wind is abiding, its properties aren't. What causes this stream, and how does it affect the Earth?

Windy star

The corona, the sun's outer layer, reaches temperatures of up to 2 million degrees Fahrenheit (i.1 meg degrees Celsius). At this level, the sunday's gravity can't agree on to the rapidly moving particles, and they stream away from the star.

The sun's activeness shifts over the course of its xi-year wheel, with dominicus spot numbers, radiation levels, and ejected cloth changing over fourth dimension. These alterations bear upon the properties of the solar wind, including its magnetic field, velocity, temperature and density. The wind also differs based on where on the dominicus it comes from and how quickly that portion is rotating.

The velocity of the solar wind is higher over coronal holes, reaching speeds of up to 500 miles (800 kilometers) per second. The temperature and density over coronal holesare low, and the magnetic field is weak, then the field lines are open to space. These holes occur at the poles and depression latitudes, reaching their largest when activity on the sun is at its minimum. Temperatures in the fast air current can achieve up to one million F (800,000 C).

At the coronal streamer belt around the equator, the solar wind travels more slowly, at around 200 miles (300 km) per second. Temperatures in the slow wind attain up to ii.9 million F (1.vi meg C).

The sun and its temper are made up of plasma, a mix of positively and negatively charged particles at extremely high temperatures. But as the material leaves the sun, carried by solar wind, it becomes more gas-similar.

"Every bit you become farther from the sun, the magnetic field strength drops faster than the force per unit area of the fabric does," Craig DeForest, a solar physicist at the Southwest Research Constitute (SwRI) in Bedrock, Colorado, said in a argument. "Eventually, the cloth starts to act more like a gas, and less similar a magnetically structured plasma."

Affecting Earth

Every bit the wind travels off the sun, information technology carries charged particles and magnetic clouds. Emitted in all directions, some of the solar current of air is constantly buffeting our planet, with interesting effects.

If the material carried by the solar wind reached a planet'due south surface, its radiation would do severe damage to any life that might be. Earth's magnetic field serves equally a shield, redirecting the material effectually the planet so that it streams across it. The force of the wind stretches out the magnetic field then that it is smooshed inward on the sun-side and stretched out on the night side.

Sometimes the sun spits out large bursts of plasma known equally coronal mass ejections (CMEs), or solar storms. More common during the active menses of the bicycle known as the solar maximum, CMEs have a stronger effect than the standard solar wind. [Photos: Stunning Photos of Solar Flares & Solar Storms]

"Solar ejections are the nearly powerful drivers of the dominicus-Earth connectedness," NASA says on its website for the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO). "Despite their importance, scientists don't fully understand the origin and evolution of CMEs, nor their construction or extent in interplanetary infinite." The STEREO mission hopes to alter that.

When the solar wind carries CMEs and other powerful bursts of radiations into a planet's magnetic field, it tin can cause the magnetic field on the back side to printing together, a process known equally magnetic reconnection. Charged particles and so stream back toward the planet's magnetic poles, causing cute displays known as the aurora borealisin the upper atmosphere. [Photos: Amazing Auroras of 2022]

Though some bodies are shielded by a magnetic field, others lack their protection. Earth's moon has cypher to protect information technology, so takes the full brunt. Mercury, the closest planet, has a magnetic field that shields it from the regular standard air current, merely it takes the full force of more powerful outbursts such as CMEs.

When the high- and low-speed streams interact with i some other, they create dense regions known as co-rotating interaction regions (CIRs) that trigger geomagnetic storms when they interact with Globe's atmosphere.

The solar wind and the charged particles it carries can affect Earth'due south satellites and Global Positioning Systems (GPS). Powerful bursts tin damage satellites, or can push GPS signals to be off by tens of meters.

The solar wind ruffles all of the planets in the solar system. NASA's New Horizons mission continued to detect it equally information technology traveled between Uranus and Pluto.

"Speed and density average together as the solar air current moves out," Heather Elliott, a infinite scientist at SwRI in San Antonio, Texas, said in a argument. "But the current of air is still being heated by compression as it travels, so y'all can see show of the sun's rotation pattern in the temperature fifty-fifty in the outer solar organization.

Studying the solar wind

Nosotros've known virtually the solar wind since the 1950s, only despite its extensive effects on Earth and on astronauts, scientists still don't know how the it evolves. Several missions over the last few decades take sought to explain this mystery.

Launched on Oct. half dozen, 1990, NASA'southward Ulysses mission studied the sun at various latitudes. It measured the diverse properties of the solar wind over the course of more than than a dozen years.

The Avant-garde Composition Explorer (ACE) satellite orbits at one of the special points betwixt World and the sun known as the Lagrange betoken. In this area, gravity from the sun and the planet pull every bit, keeping the satellite in a stable orbit. Launched in 1997, ACE measures the solar wind and provides real-time measurements of the constant flow of particles.

NASA's twin spacecraft, STEREO-A and STEREO-B report the lord's day's edge to see how the solar wind is born. Launched in October 2006, STEREO has provided "a unique and revolutionary view of the sun-Earth system," according to NASA.

A new mission hopes to smoothen light on the sun and its solar wind. NASA's Parker Solar Probe, planned to launch in the summertime of 2022, aims to "touch the sun." After several years of closely orbiting the star, the probe volition dip into the corona for the first fourth dimension, using a combination of imaging and measurements to revolutionize understanding of the corona and increase understanding of the origin and evolution of the solar wind.

"Parker Solar Probe is going to answer questions about solar physics that we've puzzled over for more than six decades," Parker Solar Probe Project scientist Nicola Trick of the Johns Hopkins Academy Practical Physics Laboratory, said in a argument. "It'south a spacecraft loaded with technological breakthroughs that volition solve many of the largest mysteries about our star, including finding out why the lord's day'southward corona is so much hotter than its surface."

Boosted resources

Real Time Solar Current of air (NOAA/Space Conditions Prediction Center)
3-Day Forecast (NOAA/Space Conditions Prediction Middle)
Weekly Highlights and 27-solar day Forecast (NOAA/Infinite Weather Prediction Heart)

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Nola Taylor Tillman is a contributing author for Infinite.com. She loves all things space and astronomy-related, and enjoys the opportunity to learn more. She has a Bachelor'due south degree in English and Astrophysics from Agnes Scott college and served as an intern at Sky & Telescope magazine. In her free time, she homeschools her four children. Follow her on Twitter at @NolaTRedd