A recent study explains why the solar system is shaped like a croissant.
The bubble around us, produced by the sun, provides protection from galactic cosmic rays, and its shape can influence how those rays enter the heliosphere.
The solar system is inside a bubble, wind and rays flow from the sun outward, rushing into interstellar space, and this creates a limit to solar influence, as objects in the solar system are protected from strong cosmic radiation, and this is called the heliosphere, and understanding how it works is an important part of understanding Our solar system, and perhaps even how we - and all life on Earth - survive.
What are the limits of the heliosphere?
Scientists draw for the first time a 3D map that determines the shape of the heliosphere
Because we are inside the heliosphere, its limits were not actually visible to us, and knowing its shape is not very easy, but it is not impossible, and this is what the new research published in the "The Astrophysical Journal" by a group of astrophysicists deals with. In the "SHIELD" mission team of Boston University (BU) with funding from the US space agency "NASA", it is another achievement in their quest to understand the heliosphere.
“How does this affect our world? ” James Drake, an astrophysicist at the University of Maryland, USA, said in the press release published on the Boston University website on December 3, “How does this affect our world? The bubble around us, produced by the sun, provides protection from galactic cosmic rays.” And their shape can affect how these rays enter the heliosphere.”
"There are a lot of theories, but - of course - the way cosmic rays enter the galaxies can be affected by the structure of the heliosphere, does it contain wrinkles and folds, for example?"
Beyond the limits of the solar system!
The Voyager probes and New Horizons 3 spacecraft have traveled to the far reaches of the solar system, and in fact, the Voyager probes have crossed the limits of the heliosphere, and are currently making their way through interstellar space.
And a report published on the "Science Alert" website explains that scientists concluded using data from these probes last year that the heliosphere can form somewhat like a strange cosmic croissant, and now they have discovered how; It is possible that neutral hydrogen molecules - those that carry no charge - flowing into the solar system from interstellar space play an important role in shaping the heliosphere.
The team set out to investigate heliospheric currents, twin streams of material emanating from the sun's poles, formed by the interaction of the solar magnetic field with the interstellar magnetic field. These are the tails of the solar system.
Similar to other astrophysical currents observed in space, and like other currents, the Sun's current is unstable, and the heliosphere formed by the Sun also appears to be unstable, and the researchers wanted to find out why.
“We see these currents reflecting off as irregular plumes, and [astrophysicists] have been wondering for years why these shapes are so unstable,” explains astrophysicist Merav Ofir of Boston University (BU), who led the research.
Neutral hydrogen atoms
The team performed mathematical modeling, focusing on neutral hydrogen atoms that we know flow through the universe, but we don't know what effect they might have on the heliosphere, and when the researchers removed the neutral atoms from their model, the solar currents suddenly became stable, and then put them back in.
“When I put it back on, things start to bend, and the central axis starts to vibrate, and that means something inside the heliospheric currents is becoming unstable,” Ophir says.
According to the team's analysis, this is caused by the interaction of neutral hydrogen with ionized matter in the heliosphere - the outer region of the heliosphere - and this results in the so-called Rayleigh-Taylor instability, or the instability that occurs at the interface between two liquids of different density when the lighter liquid pushes to the heavier fluid, which in turn results in a widespread perturbation of the tails of the heliosphere.
It's a clear and elegant explanation of what the heliosphere looks like, one that could have implications for our understanding of the way galactic cosmic rays enter the solar system, and in turn, could help us better understand the radiation environment of the solar system, beyond the protective magnetic field of the Earth and the atmosphere. aerial.
"This discovery is a really big achievement," Ophir says. "It put us in the direction of figuring out why our model has the characteristic croissant shape of the heliosphere and why other models don't."
Tags:
BIODATA