{"id":237887,"date":"2026-05-28T03:53:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T08:53:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/the-solar-winds-secret-hammerheads-and-what-they-tell-us-about-heat-in-space"},"modified":"2026-05-28T03:53:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T08:53:11","slug":"the-solar-winds-secret-hammerheads-and-what-they-tell-us-about-heat-in-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/the-solar-winds-secret-hammerheads-and-what-they-tell-us-about-heat-in-space","title":{"rendered":"The Solar Wind\u2019s Secret Hammerheads and What They Tell Us About Heat in Space"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/the-solar-winds-secret-hammerheads-and-what-they-tell-us-about-heat-in-space2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Cambridge, MA (May 27, 2026)<\/strong> \u2014The proton sharks showed up on a Friday.<\/p>\n<p>In a routine data calibration meeting for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cfa.harvard.edu\/facilities-technology\/telescopes-instruments\/parker-solar-probe\"> NASA\u2019s Parker Solar Probe<\/a> 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\u2011wind protons, this distribution had a long, flattened, head-like structure jutting out to one side.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis looks like a hammerhead shark,\u201d heliophysicist Jaye Verniero of NASA\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nasa.gov\/goddard\/\"> Goddard Space Flight Center<\/a> said. And the nickname stuck.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cambridge, MA (May 27, 2026) \u2014The proton sharks showed up on a Friday. In a routine data calibration meeting for NASA\u2019s 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 [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-237887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237887\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}