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You have your standard natural disasters: tornadoes, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions. These have caused enough trouble for mankind throughout recorded history. But changing times demand something new. So we invite innovations in the genre. And the latest new form of natural disaster that scientists have discovered: space hurricanes.
Communications from nature He first published an article in late February detailing the properties of a hitherto unknown phenomenon; we found the news in Vice. The premise is relatively simple. A space hurricane resembles the construction of the type of tropical storm that we normally find in Earth’s lower atmosphere.
The following passage from the introduction to the original study summarizes the new discovery.
Here, we report a long-duration space hurricane in the polar ionosphere and magnetosphere during low solar activity and otherwise low geomagnetic activity. This hurricane shows a strong circular horizontal plasma flow with shears, a near zero center of flux, and a coincident cyclone-shaped aurora caused by heavy electron precipitation associated with strong currents aligned to the upward magnetic field. Near the center, the precipitated electrons were substantially accelerated to ~ 10 keV. The hurricane imparted a large deposition of energy and momentum to the ionosphere despite extremely calm conditions.
The space hurricane under scrutiny took shape in August 2014. Although this marks the first discovery of such a storm in Earth’s upper atmosphere, it didn’t exactly surprise scientists. The study’s corresponding author, Qing-He Zhang, and his team have postulated the existence of such phenomena for some time. (Currently, Zhang works as a scientist at the Shandong University Institute of Space Sciences.) Researchers have observed signs of similar storms in the upper atmospheres of Mars, Saturn, and Jupiter. However, this latest study provides more evidence than ever for a space hurricane on our home planet.
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While hurricanes can be terribly destructive in our lower atmosphere, the extraterrestrial variety does not appear to pose an immediate physical threat. However, for Albawaba, space hurricanes could be detrimental to GPS systems. (And possibly space hotels).
