From the point of view of us people on earth, the sun seems to be a calm ball, simply emitting light, but in reality it is seething with activity. Eruptions, called solar flares and coronal streamers, are constantly occurring in the hot solar atmosphere, which in turn sends high-energy light and particles into space. Among other things, the solar corona constantly releases a stream of charged particles, which are also known as the solar wind.
However, it is impossible to launch a kite into the currents of this wind.
Even the slowest solar wind can travel 700,000 miles per hour. But even though scientists already know a lot about the solar wind, the source of the slow wind is still a mystery. At the moment, a group of NASA specialists at the Space Flight Center. Goddard studies the episodes of the slow solar wind in detail. In this matter, they refer to recently processed data obtained near the Earth. Thus, scientists want to determine what, in the end, carries back to the sun that wind, which spreads 93 million miles around it. Experts have identified clear signs of wind surrounding the Earth, which showed that it was formed from a magnetic phenomenon known as magnetic attachment. The results were published in Geophysical Research Letters on April 22, 2016.
Knowing the source of the slow solar wind is very important for studying and understanding the space environment around the Earth, since the near-earth space, so to speak, bathes in this wind throughout its entire period of existence. Just as it is important for us to know the occurrence of cold and warm fronts in order to make a daily forecast of weather on the Earth's surface, the concept of the source of the solar wind is also important. It is this information that will help determine the space weather directly around our planet, where certain changes sometimes interfere with the satellite navigation and radio communication systems, and it is these systems that are decisive in naval and air travel.
Translated from nasa.gov Marina Pletinko