Strange Portal
Connects Earth to Sun
Portal from Earth to Sun
(and I see the Light
Beam of Sun on my pictures, which is going through the
Earth Portals to the Sun).
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/081103-mm-magnetic-portals.html
Like giant, cosmic chutes between the Earth and sun, magnetic portals
open up every eight minutes or so to connect our planet with its host
star.
Once the portals open, loads of high-energy particles can travel the 93
million miles (150 million km) through the conduit during its brief
opening, space scientists say.
Called a flux transfer event, or FTE, such cosmic connections not only
exist, but are possibly twice as common as anyone ever imagined,
according to space scientists who attended the 2008 Plasma Workshop in
Huntsville, Ala., last week.
"Ten years ago I was pretty sure they didn't exist, but now the
evidence is incontrovertible," said David Sibeck, an astrophysicist at
the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.
Dynamic bursts
Researchers have long known that the Earth and sun must be connected.
For instance, particles from the sun are constantly whisked away via
the solar wind and often follow magnetic field lines that connect the
sun's atmosphere with terra firma. The field lines allow particles to
penetrate Earth's magnetosphere, the magnetic bubble that surrounds our
planet.
"We used to think the connection was permanent and that solar wind
could trickle into the near-Earth environment anytime the wind was
active," Sibeck said. "We were wrong. The connections are not steady at
all. They are often brief, bursty and very dynamic."
Several speakers at the workshop outlined the formation of a flux
transfer event. One idea is that on the side of Earth facing the sun,
our magnetic field presses against the sun's magnetic field. And about
every eight minutes, the two fields briefly reconnect, forming a portal
through which particles can flow.
The portal takes the form of
a
magnetic cylinder about as wide as Earth.
(This is how those of the faster
and higher vibration are most likely going to be moving to the New
Earth: through this magnetic cylinder the size of the Earth. It's
almost like a tunnel, LM).
Sibeck said to think of the FTE as a giant rolling pin that lies flat
along the boundary between the Earth's and sun's magnetic fields. (He
noted the rolling pin would have to be malleable so it could pierce
through both magnetic fields while lying flat.)
"These FTEs kind of look like roller pins, and they form as little blob
roller pins at the tip of the magnetosphere facing the sun," Sibeck
told SPACE.com. "They can't decide which way they're going to slide
around the Earth, so they grow there into big roller pins and then they
take off and sort of spirally roll along [Earth's magnetosphere] like
you're pounding out dough."
More than one FTE can form at once, he said, and they stay open for
about 15 to 20 minutes.
More to learn
In order to measure such FTEs, spacecraft must not only catch them
forming but also be on either end of the magnetic structures (either
lengthwise or widthwise). In fact, the European Space Agency's fleet of
four Cluster spacecraft and NASA's five THEMIS probes have flown
through and surrounded these cylinders, measuring their dimensions and
sensing the particles that shoot through, Sibeck said. While these
measurements have nailed down the width of an FTE, the length is still
uncertain though one measurement put it at up to five Earth radii. One
Earth radius is about 4,000 miles (6,400 kilometers).
Astrophysicist Jimmy Raeder of the University of New Hampshire used
those measurements to develop computer simulations of the portals.
He
found the cylindrical portals tend to form above Earth's equator and
then in December, the FTEs would roll over the North Pole. In July,
they roll over the South Pole.
Sibeck thinks the events occur twice as often as previously thought,
proposing two types of flux transfer events — active and
passive.
When the magnetic cylinders are active, they allow particles to flow
through rather easily, forming important conduits of energy for Earth's
magnetosphere, Sibeck said. When passive, the cylinders have more
resistance to transiting particles. The internal structure of a passive
cylinder makes it tougher for particles and magnetic fields to flow
through. Sibeck has calculated the properties of passive FTEs and hopes
he and his colleagues will hunt for signs of them in data collected
with THEMIS and Cluster.
The space scientists at the workshop still want to figure out why the
portals form every eight minutes and how magnetic fields inside the
cylinders twist and coil."
03 November 2008
