CASSINI PROBE MAKES SOLAR WIND BREAKTHROUGH
CASSINI PROBE MAKES SOLAR WIND BREAKTHROUGH
(ANSA) - Rome, November 4 - The solar wind that gives comets their tails and creates the Northern Lights is expanding like a bubble around the solar system, researchers with the Cassini-Huygens space mission announced Wednesday.
Based on data captured by the spacecraft's Italian-made antenna, the new study shatters a long-held theory about the solar wind whipping around the solar system like a comet, scientists said.
Stamatios Krimigis, one of the John Hopkins University physicists who made the discovery said ''these images revolutionize what we know about the solar wind''.
A stream of superhot particles ejected from the sun at speeds approaching one million miles per hour, the solar wind lashes the Earth's atmosphere with radiation causing light displays near the poles.
Krimigis said astronomers have been struggling to understand what drives the solar wind for 50 years and that the new findings might lead to a new ''bubble-based'' model.
A joint project involving NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Italian Space Agency (ASI), the Cassini-Huygens space mission turned 11 last month.
The spacecraft's main focus so far has been Saturn, where it has been in orbit since 2004 gathering information about the planet and its moons.
Among its many discoveries, the Cassini-Huygens mission has found that no only do ice geysers shoot out from Saturn's moon Enceladus, but that one of Saturn's rings was created by these ice particles.
Scientists have also found that material from Enceladus is also affecting the rotation of Saturn's magnetic field.
In 2004, the mission sent out a probe to Saturn's largest moon, Titan, to explore possible similarities with the Earth.
The Cassini-Huygens mission was named after Italian astronomer Jean-Dominique Cassini (1625-1712) and Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695), a Dutch scientist who first discovered Saturn's rings and, in 1655, its largest moon, Titan.
Cassini discovered Saturn's moons Iapetus, Rhea, Tethys and Dione. In 1675 he also discovered what is known today as the 'Cassini Division', the narrow gap separating Saturn's rings.
