NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has become the first spacecraft ever to fly through a coronal mass ejection from the sun—a powerful eruption of billions of tons of plasma.
Nour Raouafu, a Parker Solar Probe project scientist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. “We’ve never seen an event of this magnitude at this distance.”
CMEs are large expulsions of plasma and magnetic field from the sun that often form in the wake of solar flares. Both have their roots in the twisting and realignment of the sun’s magnetic field. When directed towards Earth, a CME can cause a geomagnetic storm that can change the shape of our planet’s magnetic field, leading to spectacular displays of aurora. However, severe examples could also harm satellites, disable communications systems and cause continent-wide blackouts.
South Africa Latest News, South Africa Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Parker Solar Probe and Solar Orbiter team up to tackle 65-year-old sun mysteryThe sun’s outer atmosphere is vastly hotter than its surface. Scientists may be close to figuring out why.
Read more »
Riding High Over Ukraine: Soyuz Spacecraft Docks to Space Station With New CrewNASA astronaut Loral O’Hara and Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub on the Soyuz MS-24 spacecraft docked to the International Space Station (ISS) at 2:53 p.m. EDT while the station was traveling 260 miles over Ukraine, south of Kyiv. The spacecraft launched from the Baikonur Cosmodr
Read more »
OPINION: Iliamna, closest to Pebble, has something to say about itWe care about jobs.
Read more »
Tiny Swarming Spacecraft Could Establish Communications with Proxima CentauriNew research from the Institute for Interstellar Studies explains how swarms of thousands of tiny spacecraft could maintain communications with Earth while exploring nearby stars.
Read more »
Harnessing All-Solar Energy: Nanocrystal Breakthrough Transforms Infrared Light ConversionSystematic copper doping boosts all-solar utilization in tungstic acid nanocrystals. Sunlight is an inexhaustible source of energy, and utilizing sunlight to generate electricity is one of the cornerstones of renewable energy. More than 40% of the sunlight that falls on Earth is in the infrared,
Read more »