Sometimes our star ejects huge volumes of matter from its atmosphere into interplanetary space, called coronal mass ejections (KVM, coronal mass ejections). Obviously, these are the main cause of disturbances in the Earth’s magnetosphere and magnetic storms.
Recently, the space probe “Parker” (Parker Solar Probe) made the first observations of its kind in a coronal mass ejection when the plasma stream was just escaping from the Sun. The instrument recorded clear turbulent eddies inside the coronal mass ejection.
These vortices are Kelvin-Helmholtz (KHG) instability, which occurs when two media, such as water and air, have very different velocities at the point of collision; The wind on the waves has a high speed, so they form crests.
Physicists believe CNG exists in the Sun’s coronal mass ejections because the plasma does not move like the background solar wind. So far, scientists have not had the opportunity to test this hypothesis, but they managed to do so thanks to the NASA probe.
According to researchers from George Mason University (USA), turbulence in the plasma flow, which is the reason for the emergence of NCG, plays the most important role in controlling the dynamics of CVMs passing through the solar wind. Understanding the nature of this turbulence is key to a deeper study of the evolution and motion of coronal mass ejections.