Dude, what are those humongous plasma waves in Jupiter’s atmosphere?

There are waves on Jupiter, but not exactly the kind surfers can ride. These plasma waves are much more intense than anything that crashes onto a beach.

NASA’s Juno spacecraft keeps coming across humongous plasma waves as it orbits Jupiter. These waves are actually known as Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities (KHIs), and they occur when plasma from the solar wind interacts with the magnetopause of a planet, the outer level of its magnetic field. The difference in velocity between the magnetopause and solar wind creates a furiously swirling wave—a vortex.

“The Kelvin-Helmholtz instability may be observed at the boundary that separates a planetary magnetic field (magnetosphere) from the stream of charged particles emitted by the Sun (solar wind); this boundary is known as the magnetopause.” the researchers said in a study recently published in Geophysical Research Letters.