NASA satellites have uncovered giant magnetic ropes linking the Earth's atmosphere to the Sun and channelling solar energy to create the spectacular northern and southern lights shows.
"The satellites have found evidence of magnetic ropes connecting Earth's upper atmosphere directly to the Sun," NASA scientist David Sibeck said.
"We believe that solar wind particles flow in along these ropes, providing energy for geomagnetic storms and auroras," he told the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU).
The discovery could also apply to the Southern Hemisphere's aurora australis as well as the North's aurora borealis.
The discovery was among a number of revelations by the US space agency's Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms mission (THEMIS) launched earlier this year.
A magnetic rope is a twisted bundle of magnetic fields much like a rope made of hemp, and although previous spacecraft have seen glimpses of them, none had been able to map their structure.
But the THEMIS's five identical micro-satellites could, Dr Sibeck told the meeting in San Francisco.
"THEMIS encountered its first magnetic rope on May 20," he said.
"It was very large, about as wide as Earth, and located approximately 40,000 miles [65,000 kilometres] above Earth's surface in a region called the magnetopause."
This is the region where solar wind hurtles into the Earth's magnetic fields, and magnetic ropes are formed and unfurled in just a few minutes allowing solar wind to be briefly conducted along them...
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