Heliosphere has oblique and rippled structures

It has been found that heliosphere contains oblique and rippled structures (see this).

Here is the abstract of the article.

Past analysis has shown that the heliosphere structure can be deduced from correlations between long-scale solar wind pressure evolution and energetic neutral atom emissions. However, this required spatial and temporal averaging that smoothed out small or dynamic features of the heliosphere. In late 2014, the solar wind dynamic pressure increased by roughly 50 % over a period of 6 months, causing a time and directional-dependent rise in around 2-6 keV energetic neutral atom fluxes from the heliosphere observed by the Interstellar Boundary Explorer. Here, we use the 2014 pressure enhancement to provide a simultaneous derivation of the three-dimensional heliospheric termination shock (HTS) and heliopause (HP) distances at high resolution from Interstellar Boundary Explorer measurements.
The analysis reveals rippled HTS and HP surfaces that are oblique with respect to the local interstellar medium upwind direction, with significant asymmetries in the heliosphere structure compared to steady-state heliosphere models. We estimate that the heliosphere boundaries contain roughly 10 astronomical unit-sized spatial variations, with slightly larger variations on the HTS surface than the HP and a large-scale, southwards-directed obliquity of the surfaces in the meridional plane. Comparisons of the derived HTS and HP distances with Voyager observations indicate substantial differences in the heliosphere boundaries in the northern versus southern hemispheres and their motion over time.

What makes the findings so interesting from the TGD point of view, is that heliosphere boundaries contain roughly 10 AU sized spatial variations. These variations are oblique with respect to the direction of the galactic wind. What comes first in mind in the TGD framework is that these could correspond to a icosahedral lattice-like structure with 12 vertices and 20 triangular faces (note that spherical geometry allows only Platonic solids as regular tessellations as analogs of condensed matter lattices). The appearance of AU in this context would be seen as an accident in standard physics but in TGD the situation is different.

If astrophysical quantum coherence and Nottale's model are accepted, planets correspond to Bohr orbits of gravitational atom with gravitational Planck constant ℏ_gr(M,m)= GMm/β₀ assignable to the pair formed by Sun with mass M and particle with mass m. β₀≃ 2^-11/5 holds true for the outer planets in the Nottale's model and Earth corresponds to the principal quantum number n=1. Therefore AU is identifiable as the gravitational Bohr radius a_gr given by a_gr= ℏ_gr/2α_grm, where the gravitational fine structure constant is α_gr= GMm/4πℏ_gr. This gives AU= r_S/2β₀² = 2πGM_S/β₀² =πr_S/2β₀²=2πΛ_gr/β₀². The Bohr radius a_gr=AU and gravitational Compton length Λ_gr define fundamental quantum lengths and might appear also elsewhere in the solar system. Intriguingly, the gravitational Compton radius of the Sun is one half of the Earth's radius and Bohr radius is is the distance of Earth from the Sun.

One can compare the situation with atomic lattices where atomic Bohr radius defines a natural scale. The mutual distances of the ripples at the heliosphere are about 10AU. The value of atomic Bohr radius is about .5 Angstrom in the atomic situation. By scaling by a factor 10, this would predict that the distances of atoms would be about 5 A: for atomic lattices this gives the order of magnitude for the lattice constant (see this).

See the chapter Magnetic Bubbles in TGD Universe: Part I.

For a summary of earlier postings see Latest progress in TGD.

For the lists of articles (most of them published in journals founded by Huping Hu) and books about TGD see this.