Scientists have discovered that solar winds from the Sun are hurling millions of charged plasma particles into space that can ultimately destroy the Earth's protective magnetic field.

This solar wind phenomenon is pivotal for scientists as they try to understand geomagnetic storms that can cause serious damage to satellites and power grids and disrupt cellphone service.

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Predicting solar winds will provide sufficient warning so steps can be taken to deal with their onslaught. Understanding space weather can lead to better predictions and research teams are now making preparations to show the results of their studies at the annual meeting of the American Physical Society's Division of Plasma Physics.

Princeton University's Plasma Physics laboratory will explain how magnetic reconnections that occur in the Sun's solar flares can transform and accelerate plasma particles into highly charged solar winds.

This magnetic reconnection can result in violent reconnecting of magnetic energy as the Sun ejects this plasma energy into space, hitting and battering the Earth's magnetic field. This reconnection has long been a mystery in space weather with scientists struggling to understand how magnetic energy transforms into explosive highly charged particles.

The U.S. Department of Energy's Plasma Physics Laboratory has managed to take measurements of this magnetic energy as it's transformed into particle energy.

This has been a milestone in terms of space weather physics research as scientists can already measure how much energy the electrons and ions transform in a reconnection layer, said Masaaki Yamada, principal investigator for the DOE's Magnetic Reconnection Experiment.

When this high energy stems from magnetic reconnection, electrons and ions eject this plasma energy from the sun. The plasma travels via solar winds and can inflict significant damage to Earth.

TagsScientists Reveal How Space Weather and Solar Winds Destroy the Earth's Magnetic Field, space weather physics, solar winds, mystery space weather solar winds revealed solved