space weather on the nightside tagged posts

Nightside Barrier gently Brakes ‘Bursty’ Plasma Bubbles

An image from a magnetohydrodynamic simulation by the Gamera project at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory shows bursty flows (in red and brown) in the plasma sheet. Rice University space plasma physicists developed algorithms to measure the buoyancy waves that appear in thin filaments of magnetic flux on Earth’s nightside. Credit: K. Sorathia/JHUAPL

Physicists extend Rice Convection Model with details of magnetospheric buoyancy waves. The solar wind that pummels the Earth’s dayside magnetosphere causes turbulence, like air over a wing. Physicists at Rice University have developed new methods to characterize how that influences space weather on the nightside.

It’s rarely quiet up there...

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