Thousands of superheated plasma bubbles are bursting around the earth and no one knows what’s blowing them. They’re not dangerous, but they could provide a clue to why a puzzling interplanetary phenomenon called the bow shock exists.
The bubbles are forming around 100,000 kilometres above our heads on the day side of the planet, where the speeding solar wind – a constant stream of charged particles flowing out of the sun – suddenly slows down so that it can sweep around Earth’s magnetic field, much like water is deflected before the bow of a ship. This area is called the…
