A team of European scientists has discovered a new type of vortex in the Earth's magnetosphere. The drift-kinetic Alfvén vortices seen by the team measure tens of kilometres across and were discovered in data from the Cluster mission. Last year another group discovered Kelvin-Helmholtz vortices, which are several thousands of kilometres across, in data from the same mission. The results could help shed more light on the effects of turbulence in both space and laboratory plasmas (Nature 436 825).
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