International Cooperation

Scientists Illuminate Cause of Sun’s “Perfect Storm”

Prof. Liu Ying of the State Key Laboratory of Space Weather, National Space Science Center, CAS and co-authors from the US and Europe uncover the origin and cause of a historical extreme solar storm that occurred at the Sun on July 22, 2012. According to their study, this event has an extremely enhanced internal magnetic field observed at 1 AU, which was due to the interaction of two coronal mass ejections (CMEs) separated by 10 to 15 minutes. The resulting remarkable solar wind speed was caused by its traveling through a region that had been cleared out by another CME four days earlier. This study was published in journal Nature Communications and was selected AS highlighting by Nature. It was also featured in many international press releases including those from NASA, Nature, Science, UC Berkeley, UNH, Science News, Space, The Register and Forbes.