Magnetic Portals Connect Sun and Earth

MaxwellEdison writes "Scientists have discovered evidence of magnetic portals connecting the Earth and the Sun every 8 minutes. 'Several speakers at the Workshop have outlined how FTEs form: On the dayside of Earth (the side closest to the sun), Earth's magnetic field presses against the sun's magnetic field. Approximately every eight minutes, the two fields briefly merge or "reconnect," forming a portal through which particles can flow. The portal takes the form of a magnetic cylinder about as wide as Earth. The European Space Agency's fleet of four Cluster spacecraft and NASA's five THEMIS probes have flown through and surrounded these cylinders, measuring their dimensions and sensing the particles that shoot through.'"

Re:STARGATE!!!!

[FudRucker]

i rather find Jack Daniels :D

Re:The Summary

[MrMista_B]

Was modded 'informative' earlier.

The explanation is a lie

[tepples]

This article is about magnetic portals. Portal is also the title of a first-person adventure game for PC developed and published by Valve. One of the catchphrases from Portal is "The cake is a lie!", hence sokoban's comment "The summary is a lie".

Re:how about the moon?

[bluefoxlucid]

The moon does not have a giant molten core of metal being continuously entagled in the sun's magnetic field and forced to rotate by the constant orbit of the earth around the sun to generate more heat and its own counter-field.

Re:electric universe kooks

[VisualFuture]

Wow. Another response lacking any hard information. What a complete surprise.

> Perhaps it is time to review some basic physics.

And electrodynamics. Remember Faraday? Maxwell?

> Wikipedia is your friend.
My friends have names like Andrea, and Jessica, and Bob. Maybe you should get out more.

Seriously, can anyone answer the question?

For the previous response:
http://thunderbolts.info/

Re:Another misleading headline

[strider200142]

Sorry, headline is correct. The Earth's magnetic field lines and the Sun's field lines are connecting every 8 minutes. The fact that they connect allows a stream of the solar wind into the Earth's magnetosphere and/or atmosphere. The article clearly states that the magnetic field of the sun and the earth become coupled every 8 minutes. Since this is an article posted on nasa.gov I'd like to assume that it isn't just another example of bad science journalism. Especially since it makes sense ;)

Re:Planets Aligned

[Dunbal]

Since Pluto is no longer a planet, its portal privileges have been revoked.

Research from 1979

[AikonMGB]

Looks related to this research [ucla.edu] done in the late seventies.

C.T. Russell and R.C. Elphic. ISEE observations of flux transfer events at the dayside mangetopause. Geophyiscal Research Letters, vol. 6, pp.33-36, 1979.

Aikon-

Re:Another misleading headline

[MrNaz]

It'd be a scale model if you were talking about a pea and an exercise ball.

Although, yes, you are right, the OP has absolutely no appreciation of scale if he thinks that our action has any effect on the Sun's activity.