Parker Solar Probe Discovers Source of Solar Wind (cnn.com) 31
The New York Times defines the solar wind as "a million-miles-per-hour stream of electrons, protons and other charged particles rushing outward into the solar system."
Now CNN reports that the Parker Solar Probe "has uncovered the source of solar wind." As the probe came within about 13 million miles (20.9 million kilometers) of the sun, its instruments detected fine structures of the solar wind where it generates near the photosphere, or the solar surface, and captured ephemeral details that disappear once the wind is blasted from the corona...A study detailing the solar findings was published Wednesday in the journal Nature...
There are two types of this wind. The faster solar wind streams from holes in the corona at the sun's poles at a peak speed of 497 miles per second (800 kilometers per second)... The spacecraft's data revealed that the coronal holes act like showerheads, where jets appear on the sun's surface in the form of bright spots, marking where the magnetic field passes in and out of the photosphere. As magnetic fields pass each other, moving in opposite directions within these funnels on the solar surface, they break and reconnect, which sends charged particles flying out of the sun.
"The photosphere is covered by convection cells, like in a boiling pot of water, and the larger scale convection flow is called supergranulation," said lead study author Stuart D. Bale, a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, in a statement. "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."
Parker Solar Probe detected highly energetic particles traveling between 10 and 100 times faster than the solar wind, leading the researchers to believe that the fast solar wind is created by the reconnection of magnetic fields. "The big conclusion is that it's magnetic reconnection within these funnel structures that's providing the energy source of the fast solar wind," Bale said. "It doesn't just come from everywhere in a coronal hole, it's substructured within coronal holes to these supergranulation cells. It comes from these little bundles of magnetic energy that are associated with the convection flows."
Now CNN reports that the Parker Solar Probe "has uncovered the source of solar wind." As the probe came within about 13 million miles (20.9 million kilometers) of the sun, its instruments detected fine structures of the solar wind where it generates near the photosphere, or the solar surface, and captured ephemeral details that disappear once the wind is blasted from the corona...A study detailing the solar findings was published Wednesday in the journal Nature...
There are two types of this wind. The faster solar wind streams from holes in the corona at the sun's poles at a peak speed of 497 miles per second (800 kilometers per second)... The spacecraft's data revealed that the coronal holes act like showerheads, where jets appear on the sun's surface in the form of bright spots, marking where the magnetic field passes in and out of the photosphere. As magnetic fields pass each other, moving in opposite directions within these funnels on the solar surface, they break and reconnect, which sends charged particles flying out of the sun.
"The photosphere is covered by convection cells, like in a boiling pot of water, and the larger scale convection flow is called supergranulation," said lead study author Stuart D. Bale, a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, in a statement. "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."
Parker Solar Probe detected highly energetic particles traveling between 10 and 100 times faster than the solar wind, leading the researchers to believe that the fast solar wind is created by the reconnection of magnetic fields. "The big conclusion is that it's magnetic reconnection within these funnel structures that's providing the energy source of the fast solar wind," Bale said. "It doesn't just come from everywhere in a coronal hole, it's substructured within coronal holes to these supergranulation cells. It comes from these little bundles of magnetic energy that are associated with the convection flows."
"has uncovered the source of solar wind" (Score:5, Funny)
Wasn't the word "solar" a good enough clue?
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Don't be daft, they pointed out where in the many layers that make up the sun the solar wind from which it was coming.
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You obviously already knew it came from regions where the Sun has hurricanes and tropical storms, thus the tropics.
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Don't be daft, they pointed out where in the many layers that make up the sun the solar wind from which it was coming.
The whippersnappers and their lame attempts at humor!
You know what I say?
Bah humbug, that is what!
They are daft, the lot of them. We knew how to deal with them back in our day, baaaaah.
Now Bob Hope, there is a man that knows how to tell a joke!
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Oh, well. I guess you were trying to be funny...
Baaaaaaaaaaah, he thinks he is Henry Youngman! We need another Vietnam to thin the likes of these people! Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!
HUMBUG!
Now Milton Berle, that is a comedian you could set your watch by!
Baaaaaaaaaaaah!
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in case you wanted to know (Score:4)
497 miles per second is nearly 1.8 million miles per hour.
Re:in case you wanted to know (Score:5, Funny)
497 miles per second is nearly 1.8 million miles per hour.
More usefully: It's about 4.8 billion furlongs per fortnight.
(approx 0.0027 C)
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Actually that is a very useful way to look at it. Mars is currently 2 AU away, so four days.
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Ah look, it's a sanctimonious metric advocate. We get those once in a while.
It's ironic to try to snark about one arbitrary measurement system by using...another ENTIRELY ARBITRARY measurement system.
In terms of practical application?
Inches/Miles/Pounds landed men on the moon FIFTY years ago...how's that benchmark working for everyone else so far?
Oh, and led to the dominant world superpower for the last SEVENTY years (industrially, for more like 100).
And for that, the US is, in fact, a 'metric' country, we
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Well done on the paywall source! (Score:1)
It was a close call - Slashdot got a story with no paywall source, but the editors managed to eek out a link to one at the last minute! Well done!
It's kind of sad to see Slashdot as just a paywall shill and story mill. Like, that genuinely makes me a little sad.
Nerd site editor doesn't know significant digits (Score:2, Insightful)
TFA says 500 to 800 km/s. Slashdot editor converts to "up to" 497 miles/s in the summary, instead of the more obvious choice of 500 miles/s which avoids the false precision. Please do better.
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The CNN article mentions 497 miles per second and 249 miles per second, not the Slashdot editor.
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The source of solar wind is... (Score:1)
The source of solar wind is...solar beans.
Parker is currently the fastest man-made object. (Score:5, Interesting)
Washington, D. C. (Score:2)
There is no more intense source of hot air than that city!