Scientists have captured a radio echo from magnetic islands inside a solar eruption for the first time. It's like spotting tiny magnets in a flying plasma cloud. The discovery will help predict space weather. What other secrets might these giant eruptions be hiding?
Sun ejects clouds of hydrogen plasma — superheated gas with electric charge — into space. Inside, these clouds are riddled with tangled magnetic threads, like a messy ball of yarn. Directly measuring this invisible tangle had been impossible, but astronomers managed to 'hear' it. When cloud particles move along magnetic lines, they emit radio waves. The signal's frequency depends on the field's strength — this link between electricity and magnetism was revealed in the works of Lorentz and Faraday. By capturing this 'singing' from a passing eruption, scientists calculated the tension of the magnetic threads: 5.6–7.9 gauss. The key finding: such a strong field isn't everywhere, but concentrated in tiny knots that look like glowing swirls in images. These magnetic 'curls' carry the bulk of the energy capable of triggering a storm on Earth. Understanding their structure will let us forecast space storms more accurately.
🎯 A single average eruption carries about a billion tons of material from the solar corona — that's like the mass of a thousand Mount Everests.