Phys.org   October 30, 2023 Both solar wind and ionospheric sources contribute to the magnetotail plasma sheet, but how their contribution changes during a geomagnetic storm is an open question. The source is critical because the plasma sheet properties control the enhancement and decay rate of the ring current, the main cause of the geomagnetic field perturbations that define a geomagnetic storm. An international team of researchers (USA – University of New Hampshire, Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Japan) used the solar wind composition to track the source and showed that the plasma sheet source changed from […]