2013/03/13 by Fang Shen, Chenglong Shen, Yuming Wang +2 · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Collision #Coronal mass ejection #Dust and Plasma Wave Phenomena #Event (particle physics) #Heliosphere #Ionosphere and magnetosphere dynamics #Kinetic energy #Magnetohydrodynamics #Solar and Space Plasma Dynamics #Solar wind #Space weather #astro-ph.SR #physics.plasm-ph #physics.space-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1002/grl.50336
published as Geophys. Res. Lett., 40, 1457-1461, 2013
openalex publication_date 2013/03/13 · arxiv created 2014/12/23 · arxiv updated 2014/12/24 · openalex created_date 2019/06/27 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Though coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are magnetized fully ionized gases, a recent observational study of a CME collision event in 2008 November has suggested that their behavior in the heliosphere is like elastic balls, and their collision is probably superelastic [ C. Shen et al. , 2012]. If this is true, this finding has an obvious impact on the space weather forecasting because the direction and velocity of CMEs may change. To verify it, we numerically study the event through three‒dimensional MHD simulations. The nature of CMEs' collision is examined by comparing two cases. In one case, the two CMEs collide as observed, but in the other, they do not. Results show that the collision leads to extra kinetic energy gain by 3–4% of the initial kinetic energy of the two CMEs. It firmly proves that the collision of CMEs could be superelastic.