A groundbreaking mission by NASA's Parker Solar Probe (PSP) has successfully ventured through solar wind for the first time aiming to prevent people on earth being unable to get on the internet.
Scientists have issued warnings about the potential impact of a solar storm, commonly referred to as an "internet apocalypse," which could strike within the next decade.
The spacecraft, which was launched five years ago, went on a remarkable journey which took it close to the sun's surface, where solar wind is generated.
Solar wind consists of a continuous stream of charged particles emanating from the sun's outermost atmosphere, known as the corona.
Despite the extreme conditions of intense heat and radiation, the Parker Solar Probe persevered 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."
Such an event could leave people without internet access for months or even years, rendering satellites and power lines useless.
The Parker Solar Probe, with its advanced instrumentation, detected solar wind with unparalleled detail, uncovering crucial information that is lost as the wind exits the corona in the form of photons and electrons.
The team of U.S. researchers likened the experience to "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 regions serve as the origin points for the high-speed solar wind.
Typically found at the sun's poles during quiet periods, the holes do not 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 Parker Solar Probe's mission, published in the journal Nature, will significantly aid in predicting 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."
The Parker Solar Probe's instruments also detected the presence of extremely high-energy particles moving up to 100 times faster than the solar wind.
Researchers concluded that this unique wind could only be formed through a process known as magnetic reconnection.
Launched five years ago, the Parker Solar Probe continues to make repeated and progressively closer passes of the sun.
Traveling at an astonishing speed of over 320,000 mph, the spacecraft rapidly gathers measurements of the solar environment from behind a thick heat shield, following a strategy of swift entry and exit.
