Cambridge, MA (May 27, 2026) —The proton sharks showed up on a Friday.

In a routine data calibration meeting for NASA’s Parker Solar Probe in 2020, a small group of scientists were scrolling through visualizations of their data showing solar winds. Suddenly, a weird shape flashed on the screen: Instead of the usual rounded blob of solar‑wind protons, this distribution had a long, flattened, head-like structure jutting out to one side.

“This looks like a hammerhead shark,” heliophysicist Jaye Verniero of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center said. And the nickname stuck.