NASA's Parker Solar Probe plunged into the sun's atmosphere to capture the granular details of how its solar wind is made.
A NASA spacecraft has skimmed through the sun's hellish atmosphere to discover a mysterious source of solar wind.
The solar wind — a stream of charged protons, electrons and alpha particles — can be broken up into two broad categories of"fast" and"slow." The fast solar wind bursts out from around holes in the sun's atmosphere and can travel at peak speeds of 497 miles per second — twice the top speed of the slow wind.
Because strong solar winds can cause geomagnetic storms that are powerful enough to send satellites tumbling to Earth or even cripple the internet, scientists are keen to figure out how they're made. Data from the Parker Solar Probe revealed that coronal holes — darker, cooler regions that open in the sun's outer atmosphere — are shaped like"showerheads" made up of mostly evenly spaced funnels of material up to 18,000 miles wide.
Switchbacks occur when closed magnetic-field loops close to the sun's surface link to open field lines stretching out of the sun, causing a whip-crack-like burst of energy as the field lines untangle to launch solar wind straight at Earth. When switchbacks are newly formed, their kinks are sharper, meaning that solar material is flung from them at much higher speeds than it is from older, smoother switchbacks, the researchers said.
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NASA's sun-kissing Parker Solar Probe finds source of 'fast' solar windThe spacecraft's data point to showerhead-like 'coronal holes' as the source of the fast solar wind.
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NASA’s Parker Solar Probe Plunges Into Fast Solar Wind and Discovers Its Mysterious SourceNASA's Parker Solar Probe probe got close enough to sun's surface to see hidden granular features. NASA's Parker Solar Probe (PSP) has flown close enough to the sun to detect the fine structure of the solar wind close to where it is generated at the sun's surface, revealing details that are lost as
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NASA's Parker Solar Probe flies close to the sun, spots origin of 'fast' solar windsUnderstanding how and where solar winds originate is critical for forecasting solar storms and space weather.
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The Parker Solar Probe may have spotted the origin of high-speed solar windsKinks in the magnetic fields near the surface of the sun appear to be the cause of fast-moving flows in the solar wind.
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NASA's Parker Solar Probe Solves a Longtime Mystery About the SunThe small spacecraft stared straight at the source of solar wind, likely uncovering the process that drives the violent bursts of plasma.
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NASA mission to the sun answers questions about solar wind that causes aurora borealisThe Parker Solar Probe answered decades of questions about so-called 'solar storms,' which create 'beautiful auroras on Earth' but also 'wreak havoc with satellites and the electrical grid.'
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