NASA‘s Parker Solar Probe (PSP) embarked on a groundbreaking mission and successfully travelled through solar winds in space for the first time.
Its goal? To prevent the menacing charged particles from interfering with internet signals on planet Earth.
Scientists have long warned about the potential adverse effects of a solar storm, often referred to as an “internet apocalypse”.
They estimate that one such event could happen in the next 10 years and would obstruct infrastructure that carries internet providers.
PSP launched five years ago and travelled on a trajectory that took it agonisingly close to the sun’s surface — the place where solar wind is generated.
The winds consist of streams of charged particles beaming from the Sun’s outermost atmosphere, known as the corona.
While the conditions so close to the Sun were extreme, the PSP managed to gather crucial insight into how the Sun and its particles work.
Experts believe that such a solar storm could result in the loss of internet access for months or even years.
A 2021 study carried out by the University of California found a 12 percent chance that a catastrophic months-long disruption could occur in the next decade.
Speaking in light of the successful mission, Professor Stuart Bale, the lead author of the study and affiliated with California University in the United States, noted why it was so important to understand exactly how solar winds worked.
Speaking in a journal paper, he said: “Winds carry lots of information from the sun to Earth. So understanding the mechanism behind the sun’s wind is important for practical reasons on Earth.
“That’s going to affect our ability to understand how the sun releases energy and drives geomagnetic storms — which are a threat to our communication networks.”
The team of scientists who observed the data collected by the PSP described what they found as “seeing jets of water emanating from a showerhead through the blast of water hitting you in the face.”
The findings helped identified a phenomenon known as “supergranulation flows” within coronal holes, where magnetic fields emerge.
These regions, it is believed, serve as the ground zero for high-speed solar winds, and are typically found at the Sun’s poles during quiet periods. They do not directly affect the Earth.
But during the Sun’s active phase every 11 years, just as the ball of fire’s magnetic field flips, the holes show up across its surface and generate bursts of solar winds. These winds are then aimed directly at the Earth.
All of the insights gained from the probe were published in a paper in the journal Nature.
The researchers say they will help aid in predicting solar storms in the future, ones that not only produce auroras but also ones that have the capacity to disrupt satellites and electric grids.
The study also found that coronal holes effectively act as shower heads. Jets emerge from bright spots where magnetic field lines funnel in and out of the Sun’s surface.
When magnetic fields find themselves placed opposite these funnels — which can be as wide and long as 18,000 miles — they sometimes break and connect, thrusting charged particles away from the Sun.
Prof Bale explained: “The photosphere is covered by convection cells, like in a boiling pot of water, and the larger scale convection flow is called supergranulation.
“Where these supergranulation cells meet and go downward, they drag the magnetic field in their path into this downward kind of funnel. The magnetic field becomes very intensified there because it’s just jammed.
“It’s kind of a scoop of magnetic field going down into a drain. And the spatial separation of those little drains, those funnels, is what we’re seeing now with solar probe data.”
