![]() The sun is expected to reach solar maximum in July 2025, which is why there have been increasing reports of solar flares and the northern and southern lights being visible in unexpected places. Our results, we think, are strong evidence that it’s reconnection that’s doing that.” It comes from these little bundles of magnetic energy that are associated with the convection flows. “It doesn’t just come from everywhere in a coronal hole, it’s substructured within coronal holes to these supergranulation cells. “The big conclusion is that it’s magnetic reconnection within these funnel structures that’s providing the energy source of the fast solar wind,” Bale said. Parker Solar Probe detected highly energetic particles traveling between 10 and 100 times faster than the solar wind, leading the researchers to believe that the fast solar wind is created by the reconnection of magnetic fields. And the spatial separation of those little drains, those funnels, is what we’re seeing now with solar probe data.” It’s kind of a scoop of magnetic field going down into a drain. The magnetic field becomes very intensified there because it’s just jammed. “Where these supergranulation cells meet and go downward, they drag the magnetic field in their path into this downward kind of funnel. Bale, a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, in a statement. “The photosphere is covered by convection cells, like in a boiling pot of water, and the larger scale convection flow is called supergranulation,” said lead study author Stuart D. The spacecraft’s data revealed that the coronal holes act like showerheads, where jets appear on the sun’s surface in the form of bright spots, marking where the magnetic field passes in and out of the photosphere.Īs magnetic fields pass each other, moving in opposite directions within these funnels on the solar surface, they break and reconnect, which sends charged particles flying out of the sun. “That’s going to affect our ability to understand how the sun releases energy and drives geomagnetic storms, which are a threat to our communication networks.” “Winds carry lots of information from the sun to Earth, so understanding the mechanism behind the sun’s wind is important for practical reasons on Earth,” said study coauthor James Drake, distinguished professor of physics at the University of Maryland, College Park, in a statement. Understanding the source of the solar wind can help scientists better predict space weather and solar storms that can affect Earth.Īlthough they can cause beautiful auroras, the solar storms can also impact satellites and Earth’s electrical grids.
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