That strong tailing off of the solar wind allowed highly hot and energetic particles to flow directly from the sun to the Earth in narrow beams called strahl, measurements from a flotilla of international satellites show. The results were presented Monday at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union. The polar glow of highly charged electrons occurred inside the normal auroral doughnut that circles the pole. The disappearance of the solar wind also had a large effect on the Earth s magnetosphere, or the extent of its magnetic field. And since the wind carries an electric charge, it flows around the Earth s magnetic field, not dispersing it, but rather molding it into a comet-like shape.
Observations made of the sun itself during that period show no evidence of unusual activity.
One possible reason is that the heat that drives the expansion was deposited too low in the solar atmosphere, producing not a bang but a whimper of a solar wind, Scudder said. Welcome to the Universe.