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e. The Van Allen radiation belt is a zone of energetic charged particles, most of which originate from the solar wind, that are captured by and held around a planet by that planet's magnetosphere. Earth has two such belts, and sometimes others may be temporarily created.
The Earth and most of the planets in the Solar System, as well as the Sun and other stars, all generate magnetic fields through the motion of electrically conducting fluids. [54] The Earth's field originates in its core. This is a region of iron alloys extending to about 3400 km (the radius of the Earth is 6370 km).
Artistic representation of Earth's magnetosphere. The plasma sheet is highlighted in yellow. In the magnetosphere, the plasma sheet is a sheet-like region of denser (0.3-0.5 ions/cm 3 versus 0.01-0.02 in the lobes) [citation needed] hot plasma and lower magnetic field located on the magnetotail and near the equatorial plane, between the magnetosphere's north and south lobes.
A Birkeland current (also known as field-aligned current, FAC) is a set of electrical currents that flow along geomagnetic field lines connecting the Earth's magnetosphere to the Earth's high latitude ionosphere. In the Earth's magnetosphere, the currents are driven by the solar wind and interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) and by bulk motions ...
Interplanetary magnetic field. The heliospheric current sheet is a three-dimensional form of a Parker spiral that results from the influence of the Sun 's rotating magnetic field on the plasma in the interplanetary medium. [1] The interplanetary magnetic field (IMF), also commonly referred to as the heliospheric magnetic field (HMF), [2] is the ...
Breakdown of ideal MHD (in the form of magnetic reconnection) is known to be the likely cause of solar flares. The magnetic field in a solar active region over a sunspot can store energy that is released suddenly as a burst of motion, X-rays, and radiation when the main current sheet collapses, reconnecting the field. [31] [32]
The heliospheric current sheet, or interplanetary current sheet, is a surface separating regions of the heliosphere where the interplanetary magnetic field points toward and away from the Sun. [1] A small electrical current with a current density of about 10 −10 A /m 2 flows within this surface, forming a current sheet confined to this ...
The magnetosphere of Jupiter is the largest planetary magnetosphere in the Solar System, extending up to 7,000,000 kilometers (4,300,000 mi) on the dayside and almost to the orbit of Saturn on the nightside. [17] Jupiter's magnetosphere is stronger than Earth's by an order of magnitude, and its magnetic moment is approximately 18,000 times ...