NASA's Magnetospheric Mission Passes Major Milestone

The universe is still an arcane place that scientists know very little about, but a new NASA Solar Terrestrial Probe mission is going to shed light on one especially mysterious event called magnetic reconnection. It occurs when magnetic lines of force cross, cancel, and reconnect releasing magnetic energy in the form of heat and charged-particle kinetic energy.

On the sun, magnetic reconnection causes solar flares more powerful than several atomic bombs combined. In Earth's atmosphere, magnet [...]

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