Jacob Shymanski
speaker
3,186 appearances
30 recordings
5 series
first heard Dec 2025
last heard 6 Jul
Jacob Shymanski’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 30 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 7.
Appearances
It was the first spacecraft to fly into the low solar corona of the sun.
And it was kind of funny because the Parker Solar Probe does not have a dedicated dust collector.
So how the hell does it even know about dust?
Well, it turns out that the tiny charged dust grains in that environment in the lower corona hit the spacecraft.
And when those dust particles hit the spacecraft, they vaporized into plasma clouds, and that produced a sharp voltage spikes on the antennas.
So in a sense, the entire Parker Solar Probe was acting as a dust collector, and that's how they found out that dust existed.
So that was the big surprise.
The dust grains not only survive that close to the sun, but the even more interesting part of that is that it appears to interact with the plasma.
And this is what really sets this study apart from all the others.
It adds to the typical models the possible interactions with these charged dust grains.
No other major studies really incorporated dust grains in their models because it was thought.
basically universally that they were irrelevant or not even a player because they weren't even there.
Lead author Syed Ayaz says, this matters for solar physics because charged dust grains are not just passive particles.
Once dust grains acquire an electric charge, they interact with electric and magnetic fields, they influence plasma waves, and modify how energy is transported and dissipated.
So these charged dust grains could have a critical impact onto the exact reason why the corona, the solar corona, has such a high temperature compared to the photosphere of the sun.
as they explore this in the future and get a better handle on it, it could turn out to be basically the ultimate reason why there's such a temperature disparity.
Ayaz envisions the future emissions using dedicated dust and plasma instruments.
And yes, this could give a much more definitive answer to this coronal mystery.
Ayaz concludes, the bigger question is fascinating.
Is dust simply passing through the near-sun environment, or is it helping shape how electromagnetic energy becomes heat and solar wind motion?
Showing 201–220 of 3,186 · page 11 of 160
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