To the list of scary things in space you can now add giant magnetic vortices. Huge swirls at the edge of Mercury鈥檚 magnetosphere 鈥� where the planet鈥檚 magnetic field meets the energetic charged particles of the solar wind 鈥� help shower the planet in solar plasma.
Kelvin-Helmholtz waves occur at the boundary between two fluids, such as two different bodies of air in Earth鈥檚 atmosphere. They are most visible on Earth in the form of strange .
KH waves also occur in the magnetospheres of some planets, and NASA鈥檚 Messenger spacecraft found them around Mercury.
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A new study of Messenger鈥檚 data suggests the waves are stronger than thought 鈥� two to three times the strength of their terrestrial counterparts 鈥� and occur 10 to 30 times more frequently too.
Messenger also detected solar plasma in Mercury鈥檚 magnetosphere linked to the KH waves, suggesting the large waves shuttle plasma towards the planet.
鈥淜H waves are more important for mass and energy transfer than we imagined,鈥� says at NASA鈥檚 Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
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When this article was first posted, the fourth paragraph mistakenly referred to the size of KH waves rather than their strength
