{"id":472255,"date":"2026-05-29T01:31:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T01:31:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/472255\/"},"modified":"2026-05-29T01:31:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T01:31:12","slug":"researcher-finds-surprising-phenomenon-in-nasa-data-from-mars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/472255\/","title":{"rendered":"Researcher Finds Surprising Phenomenon in NASA Data From Mars"},"content":{"rendered":"

Newswise \u2014 Data beamed back from Mars by the NASA spacecraft MAVEN provides the first evidence that a phenomenon protecting planets from solar winds can occur in the atmospheres of worlds that lack strong magnetic fields, according to research led by West Virginia University<\/a> planetary scientist Christopher Fowler<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Fowler, a research assistant professor at the WVU Eberly College of Arts and Sciences<\/a> and a member of the WVU Center for Kinetic Plasma Physics<\/a>, said MAVEN\u2019s observations advance scientists\u2019 understanding of how the sun interacts with the solar system and especially with unmagnetized bodies like comets, Saturn\u2019s moon Titan, Venus and Mars.<\/p>\n

Fowler and his colleagues discovered indications of a phenomenon called the Zwan-Wolf effect in data MAVEN collected in December 2023, during a \u201ccoronal mass ejection event\u201d in which huge magnetic clouds of electrified gas called plasma exploded from the sun and spread through the solar system, causing solar storms and electromagnetic disturbances.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Their findings appear in Nature Communications<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When solar wind, the continuous flow of plasma emitted by the sun, encounters bodies such as planets and comets, it is deflected around them, much like the flow of water in a stream is deflected around a rock, Fowler explained.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHowever,\u201d he added, \u201cbecause the water in that stream is relatively dense, physical collisions between water molecules bumping into each other and the rock determine how the water is diverted. In contrast, the environment in space is so tenuous that solar wind particles do not bump into each other. Instead, electromagnetic forces control how particles are deflected around these bodies.\u201d<\/p>\n

If the solar wind meets and curves around a planet that has a strong magnetic field, like Earth, that\u2019s when the Zwan-Wolf effect plays a role, contributing to those electromagnetic forces by squeezing the plasma through \u201cmagnetic flux tubes\u201d \u2014 regions of space created by bundles of parallel magnetic field lines.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe squeezing helps move the solar wind plasma around the planet, and it makes the plasma less dense in front of the planet,\u201d Fowler said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy finding this effect in the atmosphere of Mars, we are discovering new ways in which our sun can interact with and affect planets in our solar system. It\u2019s amazing to think that an eruption on the sun can disturb the atmosphere of Mars 142 million miles away.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Before Fowler noticed what he called \u201cvery interesting wiggles\u201d in the observations from MAVEN, scientists believed the Zwan-Wolf effect only happened in the region above a planet\u2019s atmosphere, known as the magnetosphere.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What Fowler\u2019s research group discovered in the data from the 2023 solar storm was the first evidence of the Zwan-Wolf effect happening not in a planetary magnetosphere, but in Mars\u2019 atmosphere.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe think this effect could occur in the Martian atmosphere all the time, but it\u2019s usually such a small effect that our instruments aren\u2019t sensitive enough to detect it,\u201d Fowler said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe solar storm really hit Mars hard and disturbed the entire space environment around the planet. This seems to have amplified the Zwan-Wolf effect so that we could observe it during this time period. We got lucky, being in the right place at the right time with MAVEN to see this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Questions remain, he added, including how far down into the Martian atmosphere the Zwan-Wolf effect can reach.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe observed these signatures all the way down to the lowest altitudes that MAVEN sampled, suggesting that it impacted the atmosphere even below the spacecraft,\u201d Fowler said. \u201cUnderstanding how these space weather events impact our solar system is important, not only for keeping our robotic \u2014 and potentially, human \u2014 explorers safe in the future, but for protecting the space assets that we rely on for our everyday technology here on Earth.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Newswise \u2014 Data beamed back from Mars by the NASA spacecraft MAVEN provides the first evidence that a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":472256,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[1380,8687,61,60,203855,1378,248,82,33894,80,70684],"class_list":["post-472255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-all-journal-news","tag-high-energy-physics","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-marsspacemavennasaspacecraftsolar-windsmagnetic-fieldplanetscometssuntitanmoonvenuszwan-wolf-effect","tag-newswise","tag-physics","tag-science","tag-space-and-astronomy","tag-technology","tag-west-virginia-university"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=472255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472255\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/472256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=472255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=472255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=472255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}