Tiny plasma jets on the sun drive the elusive solar wind, Europe's Solar Orbiter reveals.

The "solar wind" refers to pockets of energetic particles blasted out from the sun. These particles are occasionally directed toward Earth, like last summer when a rare cluster of such storms rained on our planet and sparked breathtaking auroras across the globe — likely the strongest auroras we've seen in centuries. The solar wind can also affect our planet in a negative way, however, such as through the disruption of GPS signals and other technologies that are reliant on satellite and radio communications; it can also threaten the safety of astronauts in Earth orbit.

Still, the precise origins of the solar wind have proven difficult to pinpoint. This is partly because the "footprints" carried by the charged particles in the wind — features that scientists suspect would reveal unique signatures of the regions on the sun that give rise to the solar wind — are often distorted by the time they reach Earth.

Previous research revealed that tiny jets emerging from large, dark gaps in the sun's outer atmosphere, or corona, drive the fastest solar wind particles despite being a trillion times weaker than the sun's most powerful flares and lasting no more than a minute. These so-called "picoflares" are ubiquitous and are powered by magnetic field lines that stretch into space rather than loop back to the sun's surface, serving as cosmic highways that allow superheated plasma particles to escape the sun's magnetic grasp and launch outward at hypersonic speeds.

Source: www.space.com

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