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Astronomy

The day the solar wind nearly died

Nature volume 409, pages 677–679 (2001)Cite this article

On 11 May 1999, the density of the solar wind dropped almost to zero. Space scientists are now giving their first reports of this rare opportunity to study the complex relationship between the Sun and Earth.

The study of space is generally passive, as the input factors to an environment cannot be adjusted in a controlled manner to study one isolated mechanism, as they can in a laboratory. Instead scientists have to monitor all the inputs and try to disentangle the various effects that are taking place simultaneously. For instance, the Sun emits a continuous stream of ionized gas (containing mostly protons and electrons) called the solar wind, which varies in concentration, flux, speed, temperature and composition. All of these factors affect the magnetosphere — the cavity formed by the Earth's magnetic field in the solar wind — and separating their various effects is difficult. This is why rare events such as the one centred around 11 May 1999 are so valuable. In this period, the solar wind remained completely normal except that its density plummeted to 5% of typical values. The first studies from this period are now published in a special issue of Geophysical Research Letters1.

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Figure 1: Earth's magnetosphere and the solar wind.

References

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Affiliations

  1. the Space Science Department, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Oxfordshire, OX11 0QX, UK

    Mike Lockwood

  2. the Department of Physics and Astronomy, Southampton University, Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK

    Mike Lockwood

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  1. Mike Lockwood
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Correspondence to Mike Lockwood.

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Lockwood, M. The day the solar wind nearly died. Nature 409, 677–679 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1038/35055654

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/35055654

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