He solar wind, which can travel hundreds of kilometers per second, has fascinated scientists for years. Now, thanks to the data collected by the Solar Orbiter mission, scientists have found out more about the origin of this phenomenon.
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He solar wind It is a continuous flow of plasma particles that are ejected from the Sun into space. When they travel at more than 500 km per second it is called “fast” wind and when it goes less than 500 km/s, it is “slow”.
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On some occasions, these solar particles collide with the Earth’s atmosphere, giving rise to the impressive Aurora borealis that we see in the sky, but when the Sun releases large amounts of plasma (ejections), it can be dangerous and cause significant damage to satellites and communication systems.
Scientists have been observing this phenomenon for decades but still do not fully understand the sources and mechanisms that release, accelerate and drive the plasma of the solar wind towards the Solar systemespecially the slow solar wind.
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To study it, in 2020, the European Space Agency (ESA), with support from NASA, launched the Solar Orbiter spacecraft which, in addition to capturing the closest and most detailed images of the Sun ever taken, measures and relates the solar wind to its area of origin on the surface of the Sun.
PROVEN THEORY
The difference between the speed of the fast and slow solar wind is believed to be due to the different areas of the Sun’s corona, the outermost layer of its atmosphere, where they originate. One of the objectives of Solar Orbiter was to test the theory that the slow solar wind originates in the closed corona and escapes into space thanks to a process of breaking and reconnecting magnetic field lines.
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And he has proven it. He scientific equipment He did this by measuring the “composition” of the solar wind currents, which varies depending on their origin: the closed corona, hotter, versus the open corona, colder.
Thanks to the Solar Orbiter’s instruments, the team was able to analyze activity on the surface of the Sun and compare it with the solar wind currents collected by the spacecraft. At the same time, from the images of the solar surface they were able to determine that the slow wind currents came from an area where the open crown.
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