Space is not empty. A wind of charged particles blows outwards from the Sun, carrying a magnetic field with it. Sometimes this solar wind can break through the Earth's magnetic field. Researchers at the Swedish Institute ...
Space Exploration
Jun 10, 2014
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NASA's upcoming Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission is comprised of a quartet of identically instrumented observatories aimed at providing the first three-dimensional views of a fundamental process in nature known as ...
Space Exploration
May 15, 2014
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The Earth's magnetic field, or magnetosphere, stretches from the planet's core out into space, where it meets the solar wind, a stream of charged particles emitted by the sun. For the most part, the magnetosphere acts as ...
Space Exploration
Mar 6, 2014
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The placid appearance of the Sun's surface belies a hot fireball of plasma in constant turmoil. A granular network invisible to the naked eye pervades the solar disc, with cells of hotter and colder plasma popping up, merging ...
Space Exploration
Jan 14, 2014
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Advanced computer codes are helping scientists reimagine how they might initiate a fusion reaction in the center of a tokamak, a doughnut-shaped experimental vessel. These simulations are also shedding new light on complex ...
Plasma Physics
Nov 13, 2013
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Two NASA spacecraft have provided the most comprehensive movie ever of a mysterious process at the heart of all explosions on the sun: magnetic reconnection. Magnetic reconnection happens when magnetic field lines come together, ...
Space Exploration
Jul 15, 2013
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(Phys.org) —Movies of giant loops projecting from the surface of the Sun are giving new insights into the complex mechanisms that drive solar flares and Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs). These eruptions release vast energy ...
Space Exploration
Jul 2, 2013
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On May 20, 2013, the Magnetospheric Multiscale, or MMS, mission team at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., reached an unprecedented milestone. The team mated the instrument and spacecraft decks to form ...
Space Exploration
May 30, 2013
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(Phys.org) —Naval Research Laboratory scientists have observed, for the very first time, the formation of solar flux ropes, which are a type of solar magnetic field. Models of flux ropes have been drawn by theorists in ...
Space Exploration
Apr 3, 2013
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(Phys.org)—The Sun's visible surface, or photosphere, is 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit. As you move outward from it, you pass through a tenuous layer of hot, ionized gas or plasma called the corona. The corona is familiar to ...
Space Exploration
Jan 23, 2013
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