Giant Magnetic Space Bubbles

NASA’s twin unmanned Voyager spacecraft which was launched in 1977, has found a rolling sea of huge magnetic bubbles at the edge of the solar system known as Heliosheath. It is the region between the solar system and the interstellar space known as the Heliosphere.

Initially, the scientist thought that this region was a smooth, consistent arc forming a uniform structure. But when in 2007, Voyager 1 entered the Heliosheath and Voyager 2 got there in 2008. The scientists detected turbulence that is generated by the Sun’s magnetic field, which creates sausage-shaped magnetic bubbles up to 100 million miles wide. The heliosphere is the region of space surrounding the Sun and is filled by the interplanetary medium which extends beyond Pluto. Plasma, steam of charged particles from the Sun blown out as solar wind at about 400 km/s. The twists as a result of the Sun’s rotation creates these bubbles against the outside pressure of the interstellar medium. When blown out the solar wind enters the Heliosheath and encounters the termination shock where it’s speed slows down to subsonic speed. This transition region causes compression, turbulence, heating, and change in the magnetic field and is called heliopause. In the Solar System termination shock is about 75 to 90 astronomical units from Sun. During all these processes when the solar wind escapes the heliosphere, it forms a clover-shaped tail. This is called the heliotail.

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