'Flux Transfer Event' Links Sun's, Earth's Magnetic Fields

'Flux Transfer Event' Links Sun's, Earth's Magnetic Fields

www.foxnews.com

Like giant, cosmic chutes between the Earth and sun, magnetic portals open up every eight minutes or so to connect our planet with its host star.

Once the portals open, loads of high-energy particles can travel the 93 million miles (150 million km) through the conduit during its brief opening, space scientists say.

Called a flux transfer event, or FTE, such cosmic connections not only exist but are possibly twice as common as anyone ever imagined, according to space scientists who attended the 2008 Plasma Workshop in Huntsville, Ala., last month.

"Ten years ago I was pretty sure they didn't exist, but now the evidence is incontrovertible,"

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Magnetic portal connects the sun to the earth.

[edit on 6/11/08 by plumranch]

Previously it was thought that these flux connections with the sun were permanent and that solar wind could trickle in anytime. But now they realize they are brief and dynamic, coming in bursts. They describe the "flux transfer events" as looking like rolling roller pins with a diameter comparable to earth and a length many times longer facing the sun.

The space scientists want to figure out why the portals form every eight minutes and how magnetic fields inside the cylinders twist and coil.

www.foxnews.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

I wonder if this is why the heliopause has been weakening in recent years also.. (not to mention, the earth's own magnetic field) while solar activity has actually been less active than it usually is at this point in the sun's 11 year cycle..

Hopefully we can find out what is going on.. If the earth's magnetic field continues to degrade we will continue to be at higher and higher risk of a pole shift.. It could change life on earth for every living organism in more ways than one..

But if the heliopause continues to degrade as it is now we will inevitably all die in a catastrophic bombardment of cosmic radiation (which the heliopause normally protects the solar system from).

I recently participated in an ATS thread on this very subject. The title of the news story is misleading for a few different reasons... But it sounds good as a title to a news story I guess:

Sun's protective 'bubble' is shrinking - NASA will launch mission to study

The heliosphere is this 'bubble' being talked about but it is not just the Sun's protective bubble.. It is the entire solar system's "bubble".. And we don't even know how it really works, so referring to it as a bubble is kind of weird. If it really is a kind of "bubble", it would always be in a neutral state in a way because the sun "inflating" the bubble would always be counteracted by all outside forces on the outer wall of the bubble (bow shock). The balance of those 2 forces would always determine the overall size of the protective bubble. SO even if we are able to get the NASA spacecraft close enough to the heliopause to get some interesting scientific data of how the heliopause directly interacts with the bow shock, there isn't any easy way of figuring out the big question (which is, "why is it shrinking"). Because we don't have any real data of the forces pushing on the bubble from the outside, nor can we really know what all those forces are.

If I remember correctly, we last discovered some wierd forces on the voyager spacecraft slowing it down in deep space as it travels out of the solar system but noone really knows what that force is... What I'm saying is that we have all kinds of consistent data of solar activity.. We just don't have anything to bump it up against as far as outside forces on the heliosphere. So we can't really ever know whether the degradation of the heliosphere is being caused by weakening solar activity or increased forces and bow shock from outside the heliosphere "pushing" everything in towards the middle of the bubble. There are alot of theories on how the heliosphere protects the solar system from cosmic radiation and how it all works. But we don't even know whether or not it is some kind of "solar system electromagnetic field". It appears to be in a way, but then you run into the problem of all the different theories of how the bow shock works (which noone really knows). Not to mention anything else we don't know about (which the voyager spacecraft situation apparently points to). We don't even really know how electromagnetism really works.. Not completely anyway..

It is so horribly understood that we aren't going to get all the answers we want even if the NASA mission is a complete success.

One of the more interesting things I've heard about the degradation of the heliosphere (and I posted this in the other thread) is that the last time such a degradation like this occurred in our solar system, it occurred just before one of the biggest mass extinctions on planet earth.. And that is what gets my attention.

-ChriS

[edit on 6-11-2008 by BlasteR]

reply to post by BlasteR

I wonder if this is why the heliopause has been weakening in recent years also..

Thanks BlasteR,

This must obviously be due to the "failed economic policies of Bush"! LOL

Seriously, and thanks for your informative post, I haven't yet read all of the thread you referenced. Could your define for us "Bow Shock"? And also "Heliopause" (although I assume it is the degreadation of the flux field)?

This is the second thred on this topic It was posted the other day