Wikinews

Researchers survey planet-sized space weather explosions at Venus

This is the stable version, checked on 19 December 2024. Template changes await review.

Saturday, February 22, 2014

Listen to this article
noicon
Audio file created from text revision dated 2014-02-22 and may not reflect subsequent edits to this report.
Related articles
Collaborate!

Space scientists located on three continents have published a survey of hot flow anomalies (HFAs) observed at the bow shock of Venus, in Journal of Geophysical Research on Tuesday. HFAs, discontinuities in the solar wind, were found to have much larger repercussions for Venus than for Earth.

While the common HFA space weather phenomenon is deflected by the Earth's magnetosphere, Venus does not have such a reliable protection against the constant solar wind. Venus's ionosphere is generally in a sensitive balance with the outside pressure from the solar wind, and is regularly disrupted by the anomalies.

The survey was conducted using data collected during roughly three Venusian days (about two Earth years) by the European Space Agency's Venus Express, expanding on an initial case study of a HFA at Venus published in 2012. "Not only are they gigantic," said Glyn Collinson of NASA, the first author of the papers published in 2012 and 2014, "[b]ut as Venus doesn’t have a magnetic field to protect itself, the hot flow anomalies happen right on top of the planet. They could swallow the planet whole." Seven events were observed during the surveyed time.


Sources

 

Share this:           


 

This page is archived, and is no longer publicly editable.

Articles presented on Wikinews reflect the specific time at which they were written and published, and do not attempt to encompass events or knowledge which occur or become known after their publication.

Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators.

Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.

Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.

The text of this article is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License

  This page is archived, and is no longer publicly editable.
Articles presented on Wikinews reflect the specific time at which they were written and published, and do not attempt to encompass events or knowledge which occur or become known after their publication.

Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators.

Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.

Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.

The text of this article is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License
Retrieved from "https://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Researchers_survey_planet-sized_space_weather_explosions_at_Venus&oldid=4825145"