Scientists have found that there is a "space hurricane" in the polar regions of the earth.

An international research team has discovered a new type of cosmic weather phenomenon. Above the poles of our planet, the plasma moves around and looks like a typhoon or hurricane. The discovery of these space hurricanes was published in Nature Communications.

Hurricanes are a common feature of planets of the solar system. When particles rise or fall, a low pressure area will be formed-hurricanes will appear around the low pressure area. This is how tropical storms occur in the lower atmosphere of the earth. The results show that charged particles in the ionosphere will have the same behavior.

In this new paper, the researchers reanalyzed the data from 2065438+August 2004. This new study shows that there is a rotating plasma structure with a diameter of 1000 km (600 miles) hundreds of kilometers above the North Pole. The space hurricane accelerates the movement of electrons to the earth and enhances the northern lights in this area, which are also cyclonic.

This strange aurora occurred on August 20, 20 14, and lasted for about 8 hours. This event took place under extremely calm geomagnetic conditions, which was closer to the North Pole than the general Northern Lights.

"Tropical storms are accompanied by tremendous energy. These space hurricanes must be formed by the extremely huge solar wind energy and charged particles rapidly transferred to the upper atmosphere of the earth. The plasma and magnetic field in the planetary atmosphere are all over the universe, so the research results show that space hurricanes should be a common phenomenon. "

Data from many satellites and simulations show that the quiet period around the earth's magnetosphere is likely to lead to these events. When the earth's magnetic field lines are not disturbed, a funnel-shaped structure will be formed above the magnetic poles, and charged particles in the solar wind will be directly transported to the middle and upper atmosphere.

This is a very important point. Our telecommunications network will be affected by space weather in two ways. Events such as huge solar storms will disrupt satellites and so on. At the other end of the scale, we have a continuous stream of particles from the sun, which slowly but surely consumes our technology. The results show that we should not underestimate the space weather even when it is relatively calm.