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A space tornado is a solar windstorm and is exceptionally larger and more powerful than conventional
A space tornado is a solar windstorm and is exceptionally larger and more powerful than conventional tornadoes
A tornado is a violently rotating column of air that is in contact with the surface of Earth and a cumulonimbus cloud or, in rare cases, the base of a cumulus cloud. It is often referred to as a twister, whirlwind or cyclone, although the ...
on Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to Planetary habitability, harbor life. This is enabled by Earth being an ocean world, the only one in the Solar System sustaining liquid surface water. Almost all ...
. They are also thought to produce the ''aurora borealis
An aurora ( aurorae or auroras),
also commonly known as the northern lights (aurora borealis) or southern lights (aurora australis), is a natural light display in Earth's sky, predominantly observed in high-latitude regions (around the Arc ...
'' phenomenon.
Tornadoes on Earth are formed within the atmosphere by thunderstorms, while space tornadoes are formed by plasma interacting with magnetic fields.
Characteristics
Space tornadoes are made up of plasmas, consisting of extremely hot ionized gases that rotate at extremely high speeds, some recorded at over . Within its funnel, they also generate strong electrical currents of about 100,000ampere
The ampere ( , ; symbol: A), often shortened to amp,SI supports only the use of symbols and deprecates the use of abbreviations for units. is the unit of electric current in the International System of Units (SI). One ampere is equal to 1 c ...
s. Observations show some reach up to in size then will produce miniature space tornadoes stretching around wide and more than long. Space tornadoes form roughly every three hours and take only a minute to reach the ionosphere
The ionosphere () is the ionized part of the upper atmosphere of Earth, from about to above sea level, a region that includes the thermosphere and parts of the mesosphere and exosphere. The ionosphere is ionized by solar radiation. It plays ...
. Power transformers and other man-made constructs are susceptible to damage from space tornadoes.
Discovery
Much of what is understood about space tornadoes was obtained through aNASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...
mission called Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms (THEMIS), which deployed several probes to measure the strength of the electrical currents, size, and velocity of the rotating plasma.
See also
* Space hurricane *Earth's magnetic field
Earth's magnetic field, also known as the geomagnetic field, is the magnetic field that extends from structure of Earth, Earth's interior out into space, where it interacts with the solar wind, a stream of charged particles emanating from ...
*Solar wind
The solar wind is a stream of charged particles released from the Sun's outermost atmospheric layer, the Stellar corona, corona. This Plasma (physics), plasma mostly consists of electrons, protons and alpha particles with kinetic energy betwee ...
References
{{reflist Solar phenomena Space weather Storms