A team of scientists has found that NASAs Juno spacecraft orbiting Jupiter frequently encounters giant swirling waves at the boundary between the solar wind and Jupiters magnetosphere.
The waves are an important process for transferring energy and mass from the solar wind, a stream of charged particles emitted by the Sun, to planetary space environments.
The team, led by doctoral student Jake Montgomery in the joint space physics program between the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) noted that these phenomena occur when a large difference in velocity forms across the boundary between two regions in space. This can create a swirling wave, or vortex, at the interface that separates a planets magnetic field and the solar wind, known as the magnetopause, and is evidence of unstable waves called the Kelvin-Helmholtz waves.
These Kelvin-Helmholtz waves are not visible to the naked eye but can be detected through instrument observations of plasma and magnetic fields in space.
Plasma, a fundamental state of matter made up of charged particles, ions, and electrons, is ubiquitous across the universe.
“Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities are a fundamental physical process that occurs when solar and stellar winds interact with planetary magnetic fields across our solar system and throughout the universe,” Montgomery said. “Juno observed these waves during many of its orbits, providing conclusive evidence that Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities play an active role in the interaction between the solar wind and Jupiter.”
Source: Qatar News Agency