To confirm the sudden magnetic blow (called a geomagnetic storm), magnificent auroras erupted over the poles.Įarth may have crossed through a fold in the heliospheric current sheet-a giant, wavy membrane of electrical current rippling through the solar system. We’d been suckerpunched by the Sun’s magnetism, but there was no obvious fist. No CME, no visible increase in solar wind intensity just a magnetic blip from ACE and a shockwave sent ripping through magnetometer stations on the ground followed by a surge in electricity through our planet’s surface. But, in the case of yesterday’s mysterious event in Norway, there was no warning for the magnetic breach in our magnetosphere. For example, they may detect a CME erupt on the corona, predict its speed, and then register a flip in the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) by a satellite between us and the Sun (such as NASA’s Advanced Composition Explorer, or ACE, which is located at the Sun-Earth L1 point, nearly a million miles “upstream” toward the Sun). Usually, space weather forecasters use a plethora of instruments to predict when this might happen. But sometimes, the shield is breached, often with dramatic effect. The Earth’s magnetic field warps and bends, deflecting highly energetic solar particles. Ultimately, this plasma can stream along our planet’s magnetic field (or get trapped and stored), creating auroras in higher latitudes and generate electrical currents through the atmosphere and surface. When this happens, a magnetic highway for solar particles is formed, injecting the layers of our magnetosphere with solar plasma. Now, if the conditions are right, the Sun’s magnetic field may breach Earth’s magnetosphere, causing the two to snap and reconnect, effectively creating a temporary magnetic marriage between the Sun and Earth. There’s a constant magnetic battle raging over our heads the Sun’s magnetic field washes over our protective magnetosphere, which acts like a sea wall protecting the coastline from an unrelenting stormy ocean. Our magnetosphere reaches out into interplanetary space and, like a forcefield, it deflects the highly energetic plasma (consisting mainly of protons and some highly ionized particles) sloughing from our Sun. In the case of our planet, our global magnetic field (the magnetosphere) is generated by the constant sloshing of molten iron in Earth’s core. Carried by the solar wind, this magnetism spirals out, through interplanetary space, interacting with any other magnetic field it may come across. Extending from the solar interior to well beyond the orbit of Pluto, the Sun’s magnetic field creates a vast magnetic bubble called the heliosphere. You know it as the giant orb of superheated plasma that gives life to Earth and dazzles you during your commute home from work, but the Sun also has an invisible magnetic dominance over all the planets. As you can see, the Sun isn’t currently all that active It was as if Earth orbited through an invisible magnetic speed bump.īefore we can understand what this means (and, indeed, why it’s important), let’s take a quick trip to the biggest magnetic dynamo in the Solar System. Yesterday, however, at around 1930 UT, our magnetosphere was jolted by a phantom event. While the Sun-Earth relationship is well studied, usually magnetospheric jiggles are associated with obvious (and often explosive) solar phenomena, such as coronal mass ejections (CMEs) and powerful solar wind flows.
These two key measurements allow space weather scientists to better understand how our planet’s magnetosphere is being affected by the magnetic field of our Sun and how it may impact our everyday lives. Stammes monitors the flow of electricity through the ground and compares it with the wiggles of the Earth’s magnetic field (as plotted above). A shockwave in magnetometer data and a surge in ground currents indicated that the magnetosphere had interacted with the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) “Electrical currents started flowing,” said Rob Stammes, of the Polarlightcenter geophysical observatory in Lofoten, Norway, in a report by. While science news is filled with rumbling earthquakes and rippling gravitational waves, a different kind of perturbation was felt in Norway yesterday (Jan. Earth likely passed through “a fold in the heliospheric current sheet,” which induced a powerful electrical surge down here on the ground.
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