NASA's five THEMIS spacecraft have discovered a breach in Earth's magnetic field ten times larger than anything previously thought to exist. Solar wind can flow in through the opening to "load up" the magnetosphere for powerful geomagnetic storms. But the breach itself is not the biggest surprise. Researchers are even more amazed at the strange and unexpected way it forms, overturning long-held ideas of space physics.
"At first I didn't believe it," says THEMIS project scientist David Sibeck of the Goddard Space Flight Center. "This finding fundamentally alters our understanding of the solar wind-magnetosphere interaction."
The magnetosphere is a bubble of magnetism that surrounds Earth and protects us from solar wind. Exploring the bubble is a key goal of the THEMIS mission, launched in February 2007. The big discovery came on June 3, 2007, when the five probes serendipitously flew through the breach just as it was opening. Onboard sensors recorded a torrent of solar wind particles streaming into the magnetosphere, signaling an event of unexpected size and importance.
READ MORE - NASA Article Link
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4 comments:
Understand that this isn't "NASA discovers a NEW hole larger than any that's ever been there" but rather "NASA discovers that the hole they already knew about works differently, and is larger, than they previously thought."
It's a normal function of our magnetosphere, not some new thing.
While there is a lot of lip service to the "solar storms of 2012", astronomers and astrophysicists don't hold that date as accurate any longer. Rather, 2015 or even later is accepted as the possibility of increased solar activity. The sun is still very inactive.
If its still there in the 2012 solar flip then I can't imagine how fucked we are.
not good, not good at all :-(
VirtuallyLucid, that's what happens when people make the mistake of reading a bizarre world view into the facts of credible sources, the truth gets bent into something not originally intended.
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