'Tsunami of light' just peeled Mercury into a strange comet
In parallel with the plasma punch that ignited Earth's northern sky recently, the Sun also blasted its nearest planet - Mercury - with a plasma tsunami.
In parallel with the plasma punch that ignited Earth's northern sky recently, the Sun also blasted its nearest planet - Mercury - with a plasma tsunami.
According to Live Science, the origin of two plasma punches to Earth and Mercury was observed by NASA on April 11th. It was a coronal mass ejection (CME) launch from a sunspot that seemed dead but suddenly came back to life.
Earth "hit a bullet" on April 14, causing a large area of the northern sky to burn in the aurora, threatening to interfere with navigation and communication systems. Mercury is more "unlucky" because it is small and closer to the Sun, so it was hit by a tsunami on April 12.
According to two studies led by Professor Hui Zhang from the Institute of Astrophysics at the Fairbanks Institute for Geophysics at the University of Alaska, the processes are quite similar to those on Earth, but the impact is much larger not only due to Mercury's size but also because it has a weak magnetic field and almost no atmosphere.
On Earth, the strong magnetosphere and dense atmosphere have mitigated many of the CME's effects on planetary organisms and environments, as well as power grids and telecommunications systems.
Two studies by professor Hui Zhang and colleagues, published in Nature Communications and Science China Techological Science, show that the impact of the recent CME was enough to blow matter away from Mercury violently and has created a it has a dusty tail, turning it into a peculiar planetary "hybrid" cometary object.
And most likely, a strange, chaotic and temporary atmosphere has appeared on Mercury. Because the solar wind - a constant stream of charged particles, nuclei of elements like helium, carbon, nitrogen, neon and magnesium from the Sun - plus tidal waves of particles from the CME will continuously add a small amount of atoms to Mercury, forming a thin atmosphere.
Our Sun is entering the most active phase of its 11-year cycle, and more solar storms and CMEs are expected to hit its planets, including Earth.
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