Space Portals: From the Sun–Earth X-Point to Aramu Muru

In June 2012, the University of Iowa announced a result that sounded like science fiction. A physics team led by Jack Scudder used data from NASA’s Polar spacecraft to identify a small region where the Sun’s magnetic field and Earth’s magnetic field reconnect. The process is called magnetic reconnection. At that site, charged particles from the solar wind can cross a boundary that normally keeps them outside Earth’s magnetosphere. They travel toward the polar regions and help produce the aurora.

The connection is not a metal doorway. It is a region of plasma roughly 57,000 kilometres from Earth, about one kilometre across, moving constantly and forming only under the right conditions. The measurements nevertheless establish something important: two separated regions of space can become linked for a short time, allowing energy and particles to cross a boundary they could not cross before.