solar wind<\/a>, a bubble of plasma that flows outward from the sun and envelops the solar system. Like wind on Earth, the solar wind blows in varying patterns that comprise space weather. Eruptions at the sun create the most extreme space weather\u2014dense, fast-moving clouds of plasma called coronal mass ejections that span 34 million miles, on average.<\/p>\nBut scientists have also noticed relatively small flux ropes in the solar wind, between 3,000 and 6 million miles wide. These features are too small for typical simulations of coronal mass ejections, which could only produce features larger than 7 million miles wide, but they are also too large for simulations often used to study magnetic fields and plasma particles in the solar wind. The new simulation allows researchers to see these features of intermediate size along with large coronal mass ejections.<\/p>\n
The new simulation suggested that the tornado-like flux ropes form out of the coronal mass ejections as they drive through slower solar wind, flinging aside spinning masses of plasma like a snowplow tossing snow. Some tornadoes dissipate, but more persistent vortices can form during collisions with neighboring streams of fast and slow solar wind. Telescopes pointing at the sun look for eruptions to warn of bad space weather, but for flux ropes, the researchers say that\u2019s not enough.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf there are hazards forming out in space between the sun and Earth, we can\u2019t just look at the sun,\u201d says study coauthor Mojtaba Akhavan-Tafti, associate research scientist of climate and space sciences and engineering.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a matter of national security. We need to proactively find structures like these Earth-bound flux ropes and predict what they will look like at Earth to make reliable space weather warnings for electric grid planners, airline dispatchers and farmers.\u201d<\/p>\n
The solar wind can only trigger geomagnetic storms when its magnetic field has a strong southward orientation. Spacecraft stationed between Earth and the sun already help scientists make space weather warnings by measuring the speed of the solar wind, as well as the strength and direction of its magnetic field. But a solar eruption aimed away from Earth, or with northward-pointing magnetic fields, might still toss vortices with southward-pointing magnetic fields toward Earth. Those tornadoes would go unnoticed if they miss the probes stationed at L1.<\/p>\n
\u201cImagine if you could only monitor a hurricane remotely with the measurements from one wind gauge,\u201d Manchester says. \u201cYou\u2019d see a change in the measurements, but you wouldn\u2019t see the storm\u2019s entire structure. That\u2019s the current situation with single-spacecraft systems. We need viewpoints from multiple space weather stations.\u201d<\/p>\n
The researchers hope to provide that multiprobe view of solar tornadoes with a constellation of spacecraft called the Space Weather Investigation Frontier, or SWIFT, which was developed in a NASA mission concept study led by Akhavan-Tafti.<\/p>\n
In the current proposal, four probes would be stationed in a triangular-pyramid formation, around 200,000 miles apart. Three identical probes would occupy each corner of the pyramid\u2019s base, located in a plane around L1. A final \u201chub spacecraft,\u201d located beyond L1, would serve as the pyramid\u2019s apex, pointing toward the sun. This configuration would allow SWIFT to see how the solar wind changes on its way to Earth, and its hub closer to the sun could make space weather warnings 40% faster.<\/p>\n
The apex\u2019s location would normally require an impractical amount of fuel to fight the sun\u2019s gravity, but NASA engineers, through their Solar Cruiser mission, designed an aluminum sail that could enable the probe to park beyond L1. The sail would cover about a third of a football field, allowing it to catch enough photons to maintain the spacecraft\u2019s position without burning fuel.<\/p>\n
Source: University of Michigan<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Share this Article You are free to share this article under the Attribution 4.0 International license. Spirals of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61907,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[85,46,141,21878,145,9770],"class_list":{"0":"post-61906","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-il","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-solar-wind","12":"tag-space","13":"tag-space-weather"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61906\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}