{"id":8926,"date":"2023-07-19T13:15:38","date_gmt":"2023-07-19T17:15:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/?p=8926"},"modified":"2023-07-19T13:15:38","modified_gmt":"2023-07-19T17:15:38","slug":"swri-team-identifies-giant-swirling-waves-at-the-edge-of-jupiters-magnetosphere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/?p=8926","title":{"rendered":"SwRI Team Identifies Giant Swirling Waves at the Edge of Jupiter\u2019s Magnetosphere"},"content":{"rendered":"
An SwRI-led team identified intermittent evidence of Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities, giant swirling waves, at the boundary between Jupiter\u2019s magnetosphere and the solar wind that fills interplanetary space, modeled here by University Corporation for Atmospheric Research scientists in a 2017 GRL paper.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A team led by Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) has found that NASA\u2019s Juno spacecraft orbiting Jupiter frequently encounters giant swirling waves at the boundary between the solar wind and Jupiter\u2019s magnetosphere. The waves are an important process for transferring energy and mass from the solar wind, a stream of charged particles emitted by the Sun, to planetary space environments.<\/p>\n

Jake Montgomery, a doctoral student in the joint space physics program between UTSA and SwRI, noted that these phenomena occur when a large difference in velocity forms across the boundary between two regions in space. This can create a swirling wave, or vortex, at the interface that separates a planet\u2019s magnetic field and the solar wind, known as the magnetopause. These Kelvin-Helmholtz waves are not visible to the naked eye but can be detected through instrument observations of plasma and magnetic fields in space. Plasma \u2014 a fundamental state of matter made up of charged particles, ions and electrons \u2014 is ubiquitous across the universe.<\/p>\n

\u201cKelvin-Helmholtz instabilities are a fundamental physical process that occurs when solar and stellar winds interact with planetary magnetic fields across our solar system and throughout the universe,\u201d Montgomery said. \u201cJuno observed these waves during many of its orbits, providing conclusive evidence that Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities play an active role in the interaction between the solar wind and Jupiter.\u201d<\/p>\n

Montgomery is the lead author of a study<\/a> published in Geophysical Research Letters that uses data from multiple Juno instruments, including its magnetometer and the SwRI-built Jovian Auroral Distributions Experiment (JADE).<\/p>\n

\u201cJuno\u2019s extensive time near Jupiter\u2019s magnetopause has enabled detailed observations of phenomena such as Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities in this region,\u201d said Dr. Robert Ebert, a staff scientist at SwRI who also serves as an adjoint professor at UTSA. \u201cThis solar wind interaction is important as it can transport plasma and energy across the magnetopause, into Jupiter\u2019s magnetosphere, driving activity within that system.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A team led by Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) has found that NASA\u2019s Juno spacecraft orbiting Jupiter frequently encounters giant swirling waves at the boundary between the solar wind and Jupiter\u2019s magnetosphere. The waves are an important process for transferring energy and mass from the solar wind,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71,"featured_media":8928,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/earimediaprodweb.azurewebsites.net\/Api\/v1\/Multimedia\/45b12724-6437-4348-afc8-5d65a0dbd3a7\/Rendition\/low-res\/Content\/Public","fifu_image_alt":"SwRI Team Identifies Giant Swirling Waves at the Edge of Jupiter\u2019s Magnetosphere","footnotes":""},"categories":[216],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-discovery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/71"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8926"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8926\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8927,"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8926\/revisions\/8927"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}