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Jupiter’s alien auroras reveal never-before-seen plasma waves

August 25, 2025 - auroras, which form a neat “donut” around the polar caps, Jupiter’s magnetic chaos funnels particles directly into its poles in a phenomenon that could redefine how we study exoplanets with intense magnetic fields.

Ali Sulaiman, another researcher on the team, noted that while the James Webb Space Telescope has given us stunning infrared images of Jupiter’s auroras, Juno is the first mission to orbit the planet’s poles, giving scientists an unprecedented ...

Not an aurora? New research concludes that thin ribbons of purple and white light appearing in the night sky are an entirely new celestial phenomenon

October 30, 2018 - auroras.

"So right now, we know very little about it," said UC lead researcher and study author Bea Gallardo-Lacourt. "And that's the cool thing, because this has been known by photographers for decades. But for the scientists, it's completely unknown." (Related: NASA says the solar flare that caused a radio blackout last September was the biggest flare in a decade.)Mysterious ribbons of light get named after a comedian

The atmosphere of the Earth is divided ...

Solar “superflare” could hit Earth within the next 100 years, researchers suggest

April 04, 2021 - auroras, downed communication lines

Powerful solar storms hit Earth multiple times before, bringing down communication lines and causing widespread auroras – the polar lights – that reach near the equator. A recent study in the preprint server arXiv shows that an intense solar storm in 1582 illuminated the skies over Portugal for three consecutive nights.

Researchers compiled old eyewitness accounts by observers in Lisbon. According to one of the texts, ...

Giant coronal hole on the sun creates second hole, unleashing solar winds toward Earth

April 11, 2023 - auroras on March 24, which illuminated the night sky with electric purples and greens. Some of the dazzling auroras were seen as far south as Arizona. These auroras were reportedly caused by solar winds interacting with Earth's charged atmosphere.

Numerous coronal mass ejections, which are large eruptions of plasma being thrown into space, occurred around the same time as the first coronal hole was facing Earth. This produced a large geomagnetic ...

Bright aurora on Jupiter caused by alternating currents on the giant planet, report researchers

April 12, 2020 -

An international team of researchers has succeeded in measuring the electric current system that's responsible for Jupiter's aurora. The team used data sent to Earth by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Juno spacecraft.

The data showed a surprising cause for the planet's auroras -- a nearby moon. Unlike the Earth's auroras, which are caused by electrically charged particles from the Sun, the system of currents that drives Jupiter's ...

China’ rocket fuel DUMP over 7 U.S. states adds to chemical chaos from chemtrails that sicken citizens and fuel sick care industry

June 03, 2025 - auroras as far south as New Mexico, leading some observers to mistake it for an atmospheric anomaly known as STEVE.

The streak appeared at approximately 1:24 a.m. ET on May 17, following the launch of China’s Zhuque-2E rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China. According to Space News, the rocket released its payload before reentering Earth’s atmosphere, where residual fuel ignited, creating the widespread light show. Photographers across multiple ...

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe uncovers explosive solar event, exposing hidden dangers of space weather

June 10, 2025 - auroras as far south as Cuba. A repeat today could collapse power grids for months, leaving millions without refrigeration, medical equipment, or running water. Even weaker storms, like the 1989 Quebec blackout, demonstrate how unprepared modern infrastructure remains.

The Parker Solar Probe’s measurements suggest current space weather models drastically underestimate the sun’s capacity for violence. Traditional simulations rely on approximations of magnetic field ...

Severe solar storm strikes Earth, disrupting satellites and triggering aurora spectacle

2 months ago - auroras invisible to the naked eye.

The last comparable event occurred in October 2003, when solar storms caused power outages in Sweden and damaged transformers in South Africa. While NOAA assures that widespread infrastructure collapse is unlikely this time, experts warn that a G5-level storm could be catastrophic—potentially frying power grids, disabling satellites and crippling global communications.

Ben Davidson of Space Weather News cautioned that the X-class ...

A solar superstorm crushed Earth’s protective plasma shield to a record low, scientists confirm

November 25, 2025 -

While millions looked skyward at dazzling auroras in May 2024, a scientific satellite witnessed a far more consequential event happening high above our planet. Earth’s protective plasma shield, a region known as the plasmasphere, was undergoing a violent and historic collapse. The culprit was the Gannon superstorm, the most powerful geomagnetic event in more than two decades, and its dramatic compression of this vital buffer offers a dramatic ...

Solar storms, magnetic pole shift loom as hundreds of dolphins and whales wind up dead worldwide

March 15, 2021 - auroras, colorful celestial displays of light that are commonly seen in the North and South Poles.

A coronal mass ejection can also knock out the power grid, disrupt navigation systems and satellites, and bathe high-flying airplanes with high levels of radiation. Additionally, animals that rely on the magnetic field for navigation may be affected.

In the past few days, auroras have been reported in the Northern Sky, potentially indicating that solar ...

NASA warns of solar storm chaos as sun’s unexpected awakening threatens global blackouts

September 19, 2025 - auroras visible as far south as Florida, and disrupted Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite network, leaving tens of thousands without internet.The threat to modern infrastructure

The biggest risk? Power grid failures. A severe solar storm could induce electrical currents strong enough to fry transformers, leading to blackouts lasting weeks or even months. GPS systems, which rely on precise satellite signals, could also fail, disrupting everything from airline navigation ...

Air Force prepares for potential EMP attack

March 14, 2021 - auroras that were visible all the way to the tropics.

EMPs can also be deliberately generated using nuclear weapons. If a nuclear weapon were to be detonated high in the atmosphere, according to Pry, the gamma radiation it would emit could strip negatively charged particles from air molecules and accelerate them to near the speed of light.

If these particles interacted with Earth's magnetic field, they would generate an intense, fluctuating electric current ...

They might be rare, but “superflares” could threaten Earth within the next 100 years or so, caution scientists

January 27, 2020 - auroras, it also wreaked havoc on telegraph networks across North America and Europe, with cosmically overcharged telegraph lines reported to have started fires and even shocking telegraph operators.

A superflare could do even more damage, according to Notsu.

“If a superflare occurred 1,000 years ago, it was probably no big problem. People may have seen a large aurora,” Notsu said. “Now, it’s a much bigger problem because of our electronics.”

While ...

Earth just dodged a potentially apocalyptic-level solar storm – are we safe?

March 29, 2023 - auroras illuminated the nighttime skies, glowing so brightly that birds began to chirp and laborers started their daily chores, believing the sun had begun rising. Some thought the end of the world was at hand."

It turns out that the end of all things was not quite yet at that point, even though it seemed like the case at the time. With the recent miss of the coronal mass ejection (CME) on March 12, did the planet dodge another apocalyptic-seeming event for good, ...

Problematic but not apocalyptic: Weakening magnetic field prompts scientists to ponder what life on Earth would be like without it

September 29, 2020 - auroras, will also be visible from the lower latitudes. These colorful displays occur as a result of the interaction between charged solar particles and the magnetosphere, a region of space dominated by Earth's magnetic field, rather than the magnetic field of interplanetary space. This interaction can also deplete the ozone layer, increasing people's exposure to cancer-causing ultraviolet radiation. (Related: Global magnetic anomaly hit the Earth out of nowhere during ...

Solar telescope offers unprecedented glimpse into the Sun

September 08, 2020 - auroras. But stronger bursts can further cause magnetic storms that disrupt communication satellites and electric grids. People on Earth can potentially experience electricity shortages and power outages.

In 1989, for example, excess solar energy triggered a power surge that damaged transformers used in the Hydro-Quebec power system. Six million people in the northeastern U.S. and Canada had no electricity for more than nine hours. At the time, the Sun was at ...

Discovery: The sun’s magnetic waves react to sound

July 04, 2019 - auroras and other atmospheric phenomena. They can also disrupt electronic systems on Earth.

"Our evidence shows that the Sun's internal acoustic oscillations play a significant role in exciting the magnetic Alfvenic waves," Morton stated. "This can give the waves different properties and suggests that they are more susceptible to an instability, which could lead to hotter and faster solar winds."

Sources include:

ScienceDaily.com

Nature.com

This ...

Scientists discover that Earth’s magnetic field functions like a drum; impulses ripple along its surface

June 19, 2019 - auroras in the polar region. THEMIS readings showed that the magnetosphere vibrated like a drum.Human ears cannot hear the magnetosphere's drum beats

"We found the first direct and unambiguous observational evidence that the magnetopause vibrates in a standing wave pattern, like a drum, when hit by a strong impulse," Archer explained. "Given the 45 years since the initial theory, it had been suggested that they simply might not occur, but we've shown they are possible....

Space probe records Saturn “singing” to its weirdest moon

September 20, 2018 - auroras their brilliant, constantly-changing color.

Plasma is an ionized form of matter that resembles gas. In addition to serving as an excellent electrical conductor, it is also able to conduct waves such as sound and vibration.

The plasma column that Cassini came across was carrying vibrations from Saturn to Enceladus. However, these natural waves cannot be detected by human hearing, even if a manned spaceship with a human crew dared to pass through ...

NASA says the solar flare that caused a radio blackout last September was the biggest flare in a decade

April 25, 2018 - auroras. Unfortunately, it is also possible that it could lead to even more damage, particularly to Earth's satellites, communications, and power systems. The charged plasma cloud from the sun would only take a handful of days to arrive on Earth, and according to Steemburgh, CMEs that are caused by huge flares can arrive even quicker.

And while scientists and other experts in the field already have the basic knowledge to tell when these things are going to happen, ...