Science Fiction. Whether whether you’re a jedi, a trekkie, or were once very into Doctor Who (I’ve been there), you’ve heard some terms thrown around the various ships that travel throughout the galaxy and across the universe. Specifically, you may have heard of wormholes or portals that transport our heroes across space. Intergalactic shortcuts that allow adventures to happen back to back.
But what if those portals were real?
A study released by NASA in 2012 states that they are, in a way. They are called X-points, or electron diffusion regions, where the magnetic field of Earth connects to the magnetic field of the sun, creating an uninterrupted path from our atmosphere to the atmosphere of the sun. 93 million miles away.
No, you’re not going to make the jump from Earth to Tatooine. But this process of magnetic reconnection is important at our planet, the sun, other planets, and everywhere in the universe by explosively transferring energy from one to the other. Here on Earth, it limits fusion reactors and is the final element controlling geospace weather that affects our modern technological systems. NASA launched a project called MMS that is comprised of four identically instrumented spacecraft that measure plasmas, fields, and particles in order to monitor and witness reconnection.
But the openings in the magnetic fields themselves are incredible. According to NASA’s THEMIS craft and Europe’s cluster probes, they open and close dozens of times every day. Most are small and short-lived, but there are others that are massive and sustained a few thousand kilometers above Earth, where the geomagnetic field meets solar wind. Tons of energetic particles can flow through the openings, heating the upper atmosphere, creating geomagnetic storms, and creating bright polar auroras.
Originally, astronomers did not believe there was any way to predict these phenomena. The portals are invisible, unstable, elusive. Opening and closing without warning, it was not until data from the NASA Polar spacecraft (which orbited Earth, spending a lot of time in its magnetosphere, during the late 1990’s) was examined, showing that the craft encountered many x-points during its mission.
Polar carried many sensors similar to that of the current MMS crafts, and as a result, scientists were able to find five simple combinations of energy particle and magnetic field measurements that tell us when there is an x-point or electron diffusion region.
And so, we now know about these portals that can transfer millions of energy particles, and how to find them. What now?
Scientists are primarily monitoring the reconnections, x-points, and electron diffusion regions in order to better predict effects on Earth technology and weather. But what we all want to know is whether or not we can use them to get somewhere else than the sun. I know that is what I want an answer to.
As of right now, we cannot. The only space highway that we have located that could even theoretically transfer something from Earth would only bring it to the sun’s atmosphere, where the gravitational pull would draw the object in and ultimately destroy it.
But the idea of someday finding a magnetic reconnection between Earth and a distant planet is one that I am sure the astronomers at NASA are entertaining, and hopefully someday we will be able to get from our planet to Pluto in no time at all.