NASA scientists uncovered new details about how plasma from
superstorms interacts with Earth's magnetosphere. "The
surprising result of this model is that the magnetosphere's main
phase pressure is dominated by energetic protons from the
plasmasphere, rather than from the solar wind," says Mei-Ching
Fok, an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in
Greenbelt, Md. Fok and her team will present their findings on
May 29 at the American Geophysical Union conference in Ft.
Lauderdale, Fl. Violent activity on the sun, such as a solar
flare, can produce a monster superstorm that releases plasma
into the solar wind. Large flares often result in an ejection of
material from the solar corona, called a coronal mass ejection
(CME). A CME can spew billions of tons of plasma away from the
sun and toward Earth at speeds faster than 1.5 million mph. The
plasma affects Earth and the vicinity surrounding Earth
dominated by its magnetic field, called the magnetosphere. As
plasma from a superstorm interacts with Ea