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Magnetic Portals Connect Sun And Earth By Josh Vanderwerf Until now, scientists didn’t believe this. There is a magnetic portal linking the Earth to the sun 93 million miles away. A lot of high-energy particles could flow through the opening before it closes. "It's called a flux transfer event or 'FTE,'" says space physicist David Sibeck of the Goddard Space Flight Center. "Ten years ago I was pretty sure they didn't exist, but now the evidence is incontrovertible." The Earth is surrounded by a magnetic bubble, called a magnetosphere. Earth’s magnetosphere is filled with sun particles that arrive from solar wind. The particles from the sun penetrate Earth’s magnetic defenses. The particles enter by magnetic field lines from the earth to the sun. "We used to think the connection was permanent and that solar wind could trickle into the near-Earth environment anytime the wind was active," says Sibeck. "We were wrong. The connections are not steady at all. They are often brief, bursty and very dynamic." FTEs form when: on the side of the Earth closest to the sun, Earth’s magnetic field presses against the sun’s magnetic field. The two fields merge for about eight minutes, which forms a portal that particles can go through. The portal is a magnetic cylinder about as wide as Earth.

Contributed by mrjwerf23 on January 24, 2009, at 5:19 PM UTC.

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