A NASA mission has successfully sent out a spacecraft in an attempt to stop a potential "internet apocalypse".
The Parker Solar Probe (PSP) has travelled through solar wind for the first time, gathering vital data about storms that could block internet access for people on Earth.
Experts have warned that solar storms like these could pose a threat to communication networks, leaving people offline for months or even years.
The spacecraft, which was launched five years ago, went on a journey which took it close to solar winds on the sun's surface.
These winds are made up of a stream of charged particles being released from the sun's outermost atmosphere, known as the corona.
Despite the intense heat and radiation, the PSP managed to gather crucial insights into the workings of the sun.
Professor Stuart Bale, the lead author of the study and affiliated with California University in the United States, explained the significance of understanding solar wind.
He said: "Winds carry lots of information from the sun to Earth. So understanding the mechanism behind the sun's wind is important for practical reasons on Earth.
"That's going to affect our ability to understand how the sun releases energy and drives geomagnetic storms - which are a threat to our communication networks."
The probe detected solar wind with great detail, discovering crucial information that is often lost as the wind leaves the corona as photons and electrons.
The team of U.S. researchers said the experience was like "seeing jets of water emanating from a showerhead through the blast of water hitting you in the face."
These findings helped identify a phenomenon known as "supergranulation flows" within coronal holes, where magnetic fields emerge.
The team suggests that these areas act as the origin points for the high-speed solar wind. They're normally found at the sun's poles during quiet periods, and don't directly impact Earth.
However, during the sun's active phase every 11 years, when its magnetic field flips, these holes appear across the sun's surface, generating bursts of solar wind aimed directly at our planet.
The insights gained from the PSP's mission, published in the journal Nature, will help to predict solar storms that can produce stunning auroras but also wreak havoc on satellites and electrical grids.
The study revealed that coronal holes act as showerheads, with jets emerging from bright spots where magnetic field lines funnel in and out of the sun's surface.
When oppositely directed magnetic fields pass through these funnels, which can span 18,000 miles, they often break and reconnect, propelling charged particles away from the sun.
Professor Bale further explained the significance: "The photosphere is covered by convection cells, like in a boiling pot of water, and the larger scale convection flow is called supergranulation.
"Where these supergranulation cells meet and go downward, they drag the magnetic field in their path into this downward kind of funnel. The magnetic field becomes very intensified there because it's just jammed.
"It's kind of a scoop of magnetic field going down into a drain. And the spatial separation of those little drains, those funnels, is what we're seeing now with solar probe data."
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