What is it about?
Using NASA's MMS mission we discovered that Earth's bow shock (the area where the solar wind meets Earth's magnetic field) naturally produces fast-moving streams of plasma, or jets, on the other side of the shock. These jets form because the shock itself changes over time and interacts with waves coming from upstream. This process happens without needing any unusual external conditions and is part of the normal behavior of collisionless shocks. The finding not only improves our understanding of what happens near Earth but also could explain similar processes in other planets and cosmic environments.
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Why is it important?
These findings provided a direct answer to how we can observe plasma with velocities close to the solar wind downstream of the Earth's shock! The described generation mechanism shows that the dynamical evolution of the shock itself (constantly reforming) can allow the formation of jets to take place.
Perspectives
This process is fundamental in shocks. This means that it can be found in other astrophysical and planetary shock environments, highlighting how information from the near-earth solar system environment can be generalized to reveal what happens in far astrophysical systems.
Savvas Raptis
Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Downstream high-speed plasma jet generation as a direct consequence of shock reformation, Nature Communications, February 2022, Springer Science + Business Media,
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-28110-4.
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