Despite the 150 million kilometers that separate it from the Earth, the sun does more than just light our way: it also impacts our electricity networks, and even our transport.
Planetary Sciences
13 hours ago
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The size of the solar system is defined by the volume of space over which the sun's influence exceeds those of other nearby stars in the Milky Way galaxy. This influence derives from two fundamental forces of nature: gravity ...
Astronomy
Jul 12, 2024
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A team of astrophysicists led by Caltech has managed for the first time to simulate the journey of primordial gas dating from the early universe to the stage at which it becomes swept up in a disk of material fueling a single ...
Astronomy
Jul 2, 2024
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559
Inelastic scattering off moving or oscillating density fluctuations leads to broadening of radio signals propagating in the solar corona and solar wind. Using an anisotropic density fluctuation model from the kinetic scattering ...
Astronomy
Jul 2, 2024
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The remarkable aurora in early May this year demonstrated the power that solar storms can emit as radiation, but occasionally the sun does something far more destructive. Known as "solar particle events," these blasts of ...
Planetary Sciences
Jul 2, 2024
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332
A small team of astronomers affiliated with several institutions in Japan, working with a pair of colleagues in the U.S., has solved the mystery of the unusually smooth aurora that appeared in the Arctic sky in December of ...
NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft is conducting normal science operations for the first time following a technical issue that arose in November 2023.
Space Exploration
Jun 14, 2024
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201
Terry Husted lives in DeWitt County, a major pathway for migrating birds in central Illinois. After a company submitted plans to construct a wind farm in his area, Husted said he grew worried about the potential for collisions.
Ecology
Jun 10, 2024
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Around two million years ago, Earth was a very different place, with our early human ancestors living alongside saber-toothed tigers, mastodons, and enormous rodents. And, depending on where they were, they may have been ...
Astronomy
Jun 10, 2024
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3103
The sun warms the Earth, making it habitable for people and animals. But that's not all it does, and it affects a much larger area of space. The heliosphere, the area of space influenced by the sun, is over a hundred times ...
Space Exploration
Jun 8, 2024
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139
The solar wind is a stream of charged particles—a plasma—ejected from the upper atmosphere of the sun. It consists mostly of electrons and protons with energies of about 1 keV. The stream of particles varies in temperature and speed with the passage of time. These particles are able to escape the sun's gravity, in part because of the high temperature of the corona, but also because of high kinetic energy that particles gain through a process that is not well-understood.
The solar wind creates the Heliosphere, a vast bubble in the interstellar medium surrounding the solar system. Other phenomena include geomagnetic storms that can knock out power grids on Earth, the aurorae such as the Northern Lights, and the plasma tails of comets that always point away from the sun.
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