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Although no similar phenomena have been recorded in the past, this discovery suggests that hurricanes in space may be a common occurrence, writes Science Alert.
“Until now, it was not clear if there are space plasma hurricanes, so the evidence is incredible,” said Mike Lockwood, a physicist at the University of Reading in the UK.
Hurricanes are common in Earth’s lower atmosphere: strongly rotating air mass systems are accompanied by strong winds, rain, and can cause a lot of damage in an extremely short time.
Similar hurricanes are known to occur on Jupiter and Saturn. Scientists have previously observed rotating plasma tornadoes in the Sun’s atmosphere.
Recent observations published in the scientific journal Nature Communications have revealed that hurricanes in space are not very different from their “cousins” in the lower atmosphere.
These observations were made on August 20, 2014. The observations were made public by researchers at Shandong University in China. This hurricane is said to have occurred over the North Pole and was over a thousand. kilometers in diameter.
The hurricane was recorded between 110 and 960 kilometers above the Earth’s surface, and the spiral plasma had developed 2.1 thousand. years per second. The center of the hurricane was calm, as were these natural phenomena that took place in the lower atmosphere.
It is notable that this type of hurricane emitted electrons into the ionosphere, which created a surprising effect: a large amount of light was seen under the hurricane. This natural phenomenon lasted 8 hours.
However, the reason for this natural phenomenon was not clear to scientists: the sun was calm enough at the time, so scientists had to explain what caused this plasma dance in space.
The researchers found that interplanetary magnetic fields can also create the phenomenon observed during a space hurricane, even when solar wind activity is low. It is possible that the low activity of the solar winds was the reason why this phenomenon occurred over the North Pole.
This also means that similar storms can occur quite frequently.
“Interplanetary plasma and magnetic fields exist throughout the universe, so such phenomena can be widespread,” Lockwood said.
The earth can also be affected by these phenomena. Knowing that the lights can be raised after hurricanes in space can help identify similar storms in the future.
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