When the Sun’s CME caused Earth’s bow shock to vanish, our magnetosphere was exposed to cold CME plasma and the Sun’s magnetic field. Interestingly, this caused our magnetosphere to enter a sort of wing configuration, which momentarily connected our planet to the Sun magnetically.
These are called Alfven wings and they allow plasma to quickly go back and forth between the Sun and Earth.
Coronal mass ejections may sound similar to the solar flares the Sun creates which can wreak havoc with our technologies on Earth thanks to geomagnetic storms, but they’re two different kinds of events.
Solar flares are huge flashes of light that tend to travel faster than CMEs, and their effects usually aren’t as dramatic. CMEs launch a cloud of magnetized particles into space, which can sometimes hit Earth and cause extremely unique events like the one in April of 2023.
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