March 29, 2024
Space ‘hurricane’ rains electrons
LOS ANGELES - When it comes to extreme weather, it's safe to say a "space hurricane" qualifies.

Scientists say they have observed a previously unknown phenomenon — a 620-mile-wide swirling mass of plasma that roiled for hours in Earth's upper atmosphere, raining electrons instead of water.

The researchers labeled the disturbance a space hurricane because it resembled and behaved like the rotating storm systems that routinely batter coastlines around the world. But until now, they were not known to exist.

"It really wasn't expected," said Larry Lyons, a professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles. "It wasn't even theoretically known."

Lyons was one of the authors of a study about the finding, which sheds new light on space weather events, that was published online Feb. 26 in the journal Nature Communications.

Scientists from China, the United States, Norway and the United Kingdom found the space hurricane while combing through satellite observations from August 2014. As satellites orbited around the planet and passed over the North Pole, they caught glimpses of a massive disturbance in the upper atmosphere.

The spiral-armed space hurricane swirled roughly 125 miles over the North Pole, churning in place for almost eight hours, Lyons told NBC news.

"You could see flows of plasma going around, which were like the winds of the space hurricane," he said. "These flows were strongest at the edge and decreased as you moved toward the eye in the center, before picking up again on the other side, just like the flow of air in a regular hurricane."

But that's perhaps where the similarities end. Unlike with regular hurricanes that can dump huge amounts of precipitation over Earth's surface, the scientists instead observed electrons raining into the upper atmosphere.

Space hurricanes, like other space weather events, are caused by streams of plasma unleashed from the sun in what's known as the solar wind. As these clouds of charged particles hurl through space, they can fuel magnetic storms and trigger stunning displays of the northern or southern lights.
Story Date: March 8, 2021
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