Space isn’t silent. [Sound Up 🔊] In fact, an entire orchestra of instruments fills our near-Earth environment with eerie sounds. Scientists have long known about space phenomena involving electromagnetic waves travelling around Earth that resonate like string instruments and whistle like wind instruments. Using data from NASA’s Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms, or THEMIS, mission, the scientists discovered that when the magnetopause is struck by a jet of plasm

Magnetic reconnection is like "crossing the streams" in outer space. But in this case, instead of destroying the Sumerian god Gozer, crossing the streams causes explosive realignment of our magnetic field, sending near-light-speed showers of charged particles towards the Earth. This process causes our beautiful auroras as well as potentially disrupting communications and power grids here on Earth. The MMS (Magnetospheric Multiscale) mission was designed to study this phenomenon where it happens