New Study Reveals How Solar Coronal Holes Spray Solar Wind Like A Sun Garden Hose
A pioneering study led by solar physicists has revealed how coronal holes propel fast solar wind streams of charged particles that race across our solar system.
Scientists from Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, together with scientists from the University of Graz, Kanzelhöhe Observatory, and Columbia University, have discovered how coronal holes — vast magnetic windows in the Sun's corona — launch fast solar wind streams into space at supersonic speeds, shaping their flow throughout the heliosphere. These findings set the stage for the upcoming Vigil mission to Lagrange point L5 — a dedicated solar sentinel that will monitor our dynamic Sun, transforming deep-space observations into unprecedented early warnings of solar storms to protect critical infrastructure on Earth and in orbit. The study's findings are published in Scientific Reports, Nature.
The Sun doesn't just shine — it blows. A relentless stream of charged particles, known as the solar wind, surges outward at hundreds of kilometers per second, drenching Earth and the entire solar system in a flood of electrons, protons, and helium nuclei. But this isn't a smooth breeze — it's a turbulent river with fast and slow currents that spark dazzling auroras and disruptive geomagnetic storms. The fastest streams come from coronal holes — dark, cooler patches in the Sun's outer atmosphere where magnetic fields stretch open and high-speed solar wind streams can escape from the Sun into interplanetary space. Yet how exactly these holes shape the solar wind's behavior remains an open question. When high-speed solar wind streams collide with slower solar wind, they create massive structures called corotating interaction regions that spiral outward as the Sun rotates. Since the Sun rotates every 27 days, a single coronal hole can bombard us repeatedly — a celestial metronome of space weather.
A pioneering study led by solar physicists has revealed how coronal holes propel fast solar wind streams of charged particles that race across our solar system. The research also delivers a major advance in space weather forecasting, extending prediction lead times from hours to days. Using a unique observational vantage point at the L5 Lagrange point (60° behind Earth in orbit), scientists can now better predict when these solar winds will reach Earth. The team solved a key puzzle — why solar wind measurements differ between L5 and Earth-orbiting L1 observatories. They traced the variations to three critical factors — the combined effect of smaller coronal holes, their precise locations on the Sun's surface, and the latitudinal position of spacecraft detecting the solar wind. These findings underscore the importance of future missions to L5 and L4 Lagrange points, like ESA's Vigil, to improve early warnings for geomagnetic storms — helping protect satellites, aviation, and power grids from disruptive space weather.
'Imagine watering your garden with a hose,' explains lead author Associate Professor Tatiana Podladchikova, who heads the Engineering Center at Skoltech. 'If you stand directly in front of the stream, you get hit hard. But if you're off to the side, you only catch splashes. This 'garden hose effect' explains why satellites directly aligned with a solar wind stream measure higher speeds than those at an angle. Our study shows this effect is most pronounced for smaller coronal holes at higher solar latitudes, and depends strongly on the latitudinal separation between spacecraft. In contrast, larger coronal holes deliver solar wind more uniformly across the heliosphere.'
These findings will not only improve space weather forecasting and advance the fundamental understanding of the solar-terrestrial environment but also underscore the importance of continued exploration from diverse vantage points like L5 and L4 to fully unravel the Sun's influence on the Solar System, enriching the broader field of heliophysics and space exploration.
Skoltech is a private international university in Russia, cultivating a new generation of leaders in technology, science, and business. As a factory of technologies, it conducts research in breakthrough fields and promotes technological innovation to solve critical problems that face Russia and the world. Skoltech focuses on six priority areas: life sciences, health, and agro; telecommunications, photonics, and quantum technologies; artificial intelligence; advanced materials and engineering; energy efficiency and the energy transition; and advanced studies. Established in 2011 in collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Skoltech was listed among the world's top 100 young universities by the Nature Index in its both editions (2019, 2021). On Research.com, the Institute ranks as Russian university No. 2 overall and No. 1 for genetics and materials science. In the recent SCImago Institutions Rankings, Skoltech placed first nationwide for computer science. Website: https://www.skoltech.ru/
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By Ashley Strickland , CNN An artist's impression depicts an asteroid orbiting the sun. Photo: ESA via CNN Newsource The asteroid known as 2024 YR4 is out of sight yet still very much on scientists' minds. The building-sized object, which initially appeared to be on a potential collision course with Earth, is currently zooming beyond the reach of telescopes on its orbit around the sun. But as scientists wait for it to reappear, its revised trajectory is now drawing attention to another possible target: the moon. Discovered at the end of 2024, the space rock looked at first as if it might hit our planet by December 22, 2032. The chance of that impact changed with every new observation, peaking at 3.1 percent in February - odds that made it the riskiest asteroid ever observed. Ground and space-based telescope observations were crucial in helping astronomers narrow in on 2024 YR4's size and orbit. 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Any missions in low-Earth orbit could also be in the pathway of the debris, though the International Space Station is scheduled to be deorbited before any potential impact. Initially, YR4 was seen as a case study in why scientists do the crucial work of planetary defence, discovering and tracking asteroids to determine which ones have a chance of colliding with Earth. Now, astronomers say this one asteroid could redefine the range of risks the field addresses, expanding the purview of the work to include monitoring asteroids that might be headed for the moon as well. "We're starting to realise that maybe we need to extend that shield a little bit further," professor of astronomy and physics at the Western University in London, Ontario, Dr. Paul Wiegert said. "We now have things worth protecting that are a bit further away from Earth, so our vision is hopefully expanding a little bit to encompass that." 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The latest glimpses of YR4 on June 3 before it passed out of view revealed a 4.3 percent chance of a YR4 lunar impact - small but decent enough odds for scientists to consider how such a scenario might play out. Initial calculations suggest the impact has the largest chance of occurring on the near side of the moon - the side we can see from Earth. "YR4 is so faint and small we were able to measure its position with JWST longer than we were able to do it from the ground," Rivkin said, who has been leading the Webb study of YR4. "And that lets us calculate a much more precise orbit for it, so we now have a much better idea of where it will be and won't be." The collision could create a bright flash that would be visible with the naked eye for several seconds, according to Wiegert, lead author of a recent paper submitted to the American Astronomical Society journals analysing the potential lunar impact. The collision could create an impact crater on the moon estimated at one kilometre wide, Wiegert said - about the size of Meteor Crater in Arizona, Rivkin added. It would be the largest impact on the moon in 5000 years and could release up to 100 million kilograms of lunar rocks and dust, according to the modeling in Wiegert's study. Even pieces of debris that are just tens of centimetres in size could present a hazard for any astronauts who may be present on the moon, or any structures they have built for research and habitation, Wiegert said. The moon has no atmosphere, so the debris from the event could be widespread on the lunar surface, he added. On average, the moon is 384,400 kilometres away from Earth, according to NASA. Particles the size of large sand grains, ranging from 0.1 to 10 millimetres in size, of lunar material could reach Earth between a few days and a few months after the asteroid strike because they'll be travelling incredibly fast, creating an intense, eye-catching meteor shower, Wiegert said. "There's absolutely no danger to anyone on the surface," Wiegert said. "We're not expecting large boulders or anything larger than maybe a sugar cube, and our atmosphere will protect us very nicely from that. But they're travelling faster than a speeding bullet, so if they were to hit a satellite, that could cause some damage." Not all lunar debris that reaches the Earth is so small, and it depends on the angle and type of impact to the moon, according to Washington University in St. Louis. Space rocks slamming into the lunar surface over millions of years have resulted in various sizes of lunar meteorites found on Earth. A graphic shows the range of possible locations of the asteroid in yellow on December 22, 2032. Photo: NASA/JPL Center for Near-Earth Object Studies via CNN Newsource Hundreds to thousands of impacts from millimetre-size debris could affect Earth's satellite fleet, meaning satellites could experience up to 10 years' equivalent of meteor debris exposure in a few days, Wiegert said. Humankind depended on vital space infrastructure, chief scientist at COMSPOC Dan Oltrogge said. COMSPOC is a space situational awareness software company that develops solutions for handling hazards such as space debris. "Space touches almost every aspect of our lives today, ranging from commerce, communications, travel, industry, education and social media, so a loss of access to and effective use of space presents a serious risk to humanity," Oltrogge said. The event is unlikely to trigger a Kessler Syndrome scenario in which debris from broken satellites would collide with others to create a domino effect or fall to Earth. Instead, it might be more akin to when a piece of gravel strikes a car windshield at high speed, meaning solar panels or other delicate satellite parts might be damaged, but the satellite will remain in one piece, Wiegert said. While a temporary loss of communication and navigation from satellites would create widespread difficulties on Earth, Wiegert said he believed the potential impact was something for satellite operators, rather than the public, to worry about. Scientists and astronomers around the world were thinking about the possible scenarios since they could not rule out a lunar impact before YR4 disappeared from view, Wiegert said. "We realise that an impact to the moon could be consequential, so what would we do?" de Wit said. A potential planetary defence plan might be clearer if the asteroid were headed straight for Earth. Rivkin helped test one approach in September 2022 as the principal investigator of NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, which intentionally slammed a spacecraft into the asteroid Dimorphos in September 2022. Dimorphos is a moonlet asteroid that orbits a larger parent asteroid known as Didymos. Neither poses a threat to Earth, but the double-asteroid system was a perfect target to test deflection technology because Dimorphos' size is comparable to asteroids that could harm our planet in the event of an impact. The DART mission crashed a spacecraft into the asteroid at 13,645 miles per hour or six kilometres per second to find out whether such a kinetic impact would be enough to change the motion of a celestial object in space. It worked. Since the day of the collision, data from ground-based telescopes has revealed that the DART spacecraft did alter Dimorphos' orbital period - or how long it takes to make a single revolution around Didymos - by about 32 or 33 minutes. And scientists have continued to observe additional changes to the pair, including how the direct hit likely deformed Dimorphos due to the asteroid's composition. Similarly, if YR4 strikes the moon and doesn't result in damaging effects for satellites, it could create a tremendous opportunity for researchers to learn how the lunar surface responds to impacts, Wiegert said. But whether it would make sense to send a DART-like mission to knock YR4 off a collision course with the moon remains to be seen. It would depend on future risk assessments by planetary defence groups when the asteroid came back into view around 2028, de Wit said. Though defence plans for a potential moon impact still aren't clear, YR4's journey underscores the importance - and the challenges - of tracking objects that are often impossible to see. YR4 was detected by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System, or ATLAS telescope, in Río Hurtado, Chile, two days after the asteroid had already made its closest pass by Earth, hidden by the bright glare of the sun as it approached our planet. The same thing occurred when an asteroid measuring roughly 20 metres across hit the atmosphere and exploded above Chelyabinsk, Russia, on February 15, 2013, damaging thousands of buildings, according to the European Space Agency. While no one died, about 1,500 people were injured when the windows in homes and businesses blew out due to the shock wave. A vapor cloud trail left by the Chelyabinsk asteroid. Photo: M. Ahmetvaleev/ESA via CNN Newsource Trying to observe asteroids was challenging for many reasons, Rivkin said. Asteroids are incredibly faint and hard to see because rather than emitting their own light, they only reflect sunlight. And because of their relatively tiny size, interpreting observations is not a clear-cut process like looking through a telescope at a planet such as Mars or Jupiter. "For asteroids, we only see them as a point of light, and so by measuring how bright they are and measuring their temperature, basically we can get a size based on how big do they have to be in order to be this bright," Rivkin said. For decades, astronomers have had to search for faint asteroids by night, which means missing any that may be on a path coming from the direction of the sun - creating the world's biggest blind spot for ground-based telescopes that can't block out our star's luminosity. But upcoming telescopes - including NASA's NEO Surveyor expected to launch by the end of 2027 and the European Space Agency's Near-Earth Object Mission in the InfraRed, or NEOMIR satellite, set for liftoff in the early 2030s - could shrink that blind spot, helping researchers detect asteroids much closer to the sun. "NEOMIR would have detected asteroid 2024 YR4 about a month earlier than ground-based telescopes did," head of ESA's Planetary Defence Office Richard Moissl said in a statement. "This would have given astronomers more time to study the asteroid's trajectory and allowed them to much sooner rule out any chance of Earth impact in 2032." ESA's NEOMIR mission could spot previously unknown asteroids. Photo: Pierre Carril/ESA via CNN Newsource NASA and other space agencies are constantly on the lookout for potentially hazardous asteroids, defined as such based on their distance from Earth and ability to cause significant damage should an impact occur. Asteroids that can't get any closer to our planet than one-twentieth of Earth's distance from the sun are not considered to be potentially hazardous asteroids, according to NASA. When the new Vera C. Rubin Observatory, located in the Andes in Chile, released its first stunning images of the cosmos in June, researchers revealed the discovery of more than 2,100 previously unknown asteroids after seven nights of observations. Of those newly detected space rocks, seven were near-Earth objects. A near-Earth object is an asteroid or comet on an orbit that brings it within about 190 million kilometres of the sun, which means it has the potential to pass near Earth, according to NASA. None of the new ones detected by Rubin were determined to pose a threat to our planet. Rubin would act as a great asteroid hunter, de Wit said, while telescopes such as Webb could be a tracker that follow up on Rubin's discoveries. A proposal by Rivkin and de Wit to use Webb to observe YR4 in the spring of 2026 has just been approved. Webb is the only telescope with a chance of glimpsing the asteroid before 2028. "This newly approved programme will buy decision makers two extra years to prepare - though most likely to relax, as there is an 80 percent chance of ruling out impact - while providing key experience-based lessons for handling future potential impactors to be discovered by Vera Rubin," de Wit said. And because of the twists and turns of YR4's tale thus far, asteroids that have potential to affect the moon could become objects of even more intense study in the future. "If this really is a thing that we only have to worry about every 5,000 years or something, then maybe that's less pressing," Rivkin said. "But even just asking what would we do if we did see something that was going to hit the moon is at least something that we can now start thinking about." - CNN
