Tag : plasma

Washington: The plasma wave that stormed Mercury on April 12 is likely to trigger a geomagnetic storm and scouring material from the planet's surface, Live Science reported. The sun's activity has been increasing far faster than scientists forecasted. The powerful eruption, known as a coronal mass ejection (CME), was seen emanating from the sun's far side on the evening of April 11 and took less than a day to strike Mercury which is the closest planet to our star, according to spaceweather.com. The storm may have created a temporary atmosphere and even added material to Mercury's comet-like tail, the report said. The plasma wave came from a sunspot - areas on the outside of the sun where powerful magnetic fields, created by the flow of electric charges, get knotted up before suddenly snapping. The energy from this snapping process is released in the form of radiation bursts called solar flares or as waves of plasma (CMEs). On planets that have strong magnetic fields, like Earth, CMEs are absorbed and trigger powerful geomagnetic storms. But unlike Earth, Mercury doesn't have a very strong magnetic field. The atoms that are on Mercury are constantly being lost to space, forming a comet-like tail of ejected material behind the planet. But the solar wind -- the constant stream of charged particles, nuclei of elements such as helium, carbon, nitrogen, neon and magnesium from the sun -- and tidal waves of particles from CMEs constantly replenish Mercury's tiny quantities of atoms, giving it a fluctuating, thin layer of atmosphere, Live Science reported. Previously, scientists were unsure if Mercury's magnetic field was strong enough to induce geomagnetic storms. However, two recent studies published in the journals Nature Communicati ...