Capitol News

On January 17, 2025, Michigan State University announced a significant development in the study of solar storms and space weather. Thomas Do, an astronomy graduate student at the university, has published a paper introducing a new model that predicts how particles accelerate under various conditions. This advancement could have implications for understanding solar storms that affect space technology.

Do's research began three years ago during his undergraduate studies at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. His work focused on how charged particles gain energy when swept along by coronal mass ejections from the sun. These ejections can create shock waves capable of accelerating particles to high speeds.

"As they fly out from the sun, they interact with charged particles along the way. During those interactions, particles gain energy from the shock wave," Do explained.

The updated model builds upon earlier work by Federico Fraschetti, an astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. Their collaborative effort expands on Fraschetti's 2021 model by predicting particle acceleration and escape over a broader range of energies than previously considered possible.

"We're trying to allow for more particles to escape because we believe that's more physically realistic," said Do.

The team compared their model to data collected during a solar event on September 5, 2022. On this date, NASA's Parker Solar Probe recorded crucial information as it encountered a shock wave from a massive solar explosion.

"We were so lucky in September 2022 to see the very beginning of this process," Fraschetti noted. "This is one of the events that Parker Solar Probe was designed to measure."

Their findings showed that their model accurately predicted particle behavior across different energy levels, confirming their expectations about young shock waves near the sun.

"The model showed an excellent agreement with the data and confirmed that our physical expectation of what happens to young shock waves close to the sun is correct," Fraschetti stated.

"This model can be used in other areas of space research that involve charged particles," added Do.