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Comment by s_husso | Hacker News Reader

They dub it as 'the portal' but it seems that there is just a really long, 93million miles-long, magnetic field that connects the magnetic field of Earth and Sun. So I assume that it doesn't mean that we can 'throw stuff' at one end and expect it to come instantly over to the other end?

Can someone explain is there an application where we could utilize this discovery?

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It sounds like the Interplanetary Transport Network, but with magnetic force instead of gravity. Maybe we can manipulate magnetic fields to move things through it?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Transport_Netwo...

I'd surmise that a miniature probe could get a free trajectory to the Sun by taking advantage of this. Not sure how low a mass it would have to be though.

If this force was non-trivial we'd see it when we send out spacecraft or it would affect things in orbit.

My gut feeling is that a theoretical probe that could use this would have to weigh so little that it wouldn't be worth creating or its size would greatly limit what it could do.

Why miniature? Hook into the MFLs with some big coils and you can drag pretty much anything through the field. The sun's magnetic field is immensely powerful compared to anything we're familiar with on earth.

The solar wind is a few nT, while Earth's field is tens of uT. You're not going to be moving anything with that.

Not talking solar wind in terms of photon pressure, talking magnetic flux coupling.

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