Breakthrough method for predicting solar storms

Extensive power outages and satellite blackouts that affect air travel and the internet are some of the potential consequences of massive solar storms. These storms are believed to be caused by the release of enormous amounts ...

Goddard building instrument to study reconnection

Whether it's a giant solar flare or a beautiful green-blue aurora, just about everything interesting in space weather happens due to a phenomenon called magnetic reconnection. Reconnection occurs when magnetic field lines ...

JILA team develops 'spinning trap' to measure electron roundness

JILA researchers have developed a method of spinning electric and magnetic fields around trapped molecular ions to measure whether the ions' tiny electrons are truly round—research with major implications for future scientific ...

Magnetic shielding of ion beam thruster walls

Electric rocket engines known as Hall thrusters, which use a super high-velocity stream of ions to propel a spacecraft in space, have been used successfully onboard many missions for half a century. Erosion of the discharge ...

Energy simulation may explain turbulence mystery

(PhysOrg.com) -- A new 3D model linking magnetic fields to the transfer of energy in space might help solve a physics mystery first observed in the solar wind 15 years ago.

Near ground-state cooling of 2-D trapped ion crystals

Researchers have been trying to cool macroscopic mechanical oscillators down to their ground state for several decades. Nonetheless, past studies have merely attained the cooling of a few selected vibrational modes of such ...

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