Scientists say they have confirmed the existence of a space hurricane with a mass of 600 miles across the North Pole.
Researchers led by Shandong University in China used satellite data to identify a space tornado, and found that it came from ionized plasma gas rather than a circular pattern from air.
The mass emit electrons instead of water and lasted about 8 hours before decay.
Professor Mike Lockwood, a space scientist at the University of Reading, said tornadoes could be a global phenomenon on planets and moons with magnetic fields and plasmas.
“It’s unbelievable to prove this with eye-catching observations, as the existence of a space plasma hurricane has not been confirmed so far,” he said.
Tropical storms are associated with enormous amounts of energy, and these cosmic hurricanes must be created by solar wind energy and charged particles moving unusually large and rapidly into the upper Earth’s atmosphere.
“Because the plasma and magnetic fields of the planetary atmosphere exist throughout the universe, the results indicate that a cosmic hurricane should be a widespread phenomenon.”
He discovered that space hurricanes that occurred during periods of low geomagnetic activity share many characteristics with those of Earth’s cyclones. That is, a quiet center, a spiral arm, and a wide range of rotation.
This is expected to lead to increased satellite clouds, disruption of high-frequency radio communications, increased errors in cross-horizontal radar sites, and space weather effects such as satellite navigation and communication systems.
Results are published in Nature Communications.
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