Every 8 minutes a new portal appears in the sky New research has found out where the portals from the Earth lead. While you are reading this test, a magnetic portal opens from the Earth to the Sun, on a distance of 150 million kilometers. Tons of high-energy particles pass through portal, when you read this passage. This is called a "flux transfer event" or "FTE", said space physicist David Seebeck of the Goddard Space Flight Center. "In 1998 I was sure they didn't exist, but now the evidence is irrefutable." David Seebeck proved the existence of magnetic portals and presented this evidence at an international meeting of space physicists (a seminar on plasma back in 2008 in Huntsville, Alabama). Later, NASA fully confirmed that the portals connecting the Sun and the Earth appear every 8 minutes. On the daytime side of the Earth, the magnetic field is pressed against the magnetic field of the Sun. Approximately every 8 minutes, these two fields briefly merge or "reunite", forming a portal through which particles can pass. The portal has the shape of a magnetic cylinder the width of the Earth. Four Cluster ESA spacecraft and five THEMIS NASA probes flew through these cylinders and surrounded them, measuring the size and registering particles passing through. "They do exist," said Seebeck. Now that Cluster and THEMIS have directly explored portals, scientists can use those measurements to simulate on computers. Space physicist Jimmy Rader of the University of New Hampshire presented a paper on one such model. He told his colleagues that cylindrical portals usually form above the Earth's equator and then pass over the Earth's winter pole. "I think there are two flavors of these portals: active and passive." Active portals are magnetic cylinders through which particles pass fairly easily; they are important conductors of energy for the Earth's magnetosphere. Passive portals are magnetic cylinders that offer more resistance; their internal structure does not allow for such a light flow of particles and fields. Passive FTEs may not be important, but until we know more about them, we cannot be sure. There are many unanswered questions: Why do portals form every 8 minutes? How do magnetic fields inside a cylinder twist and curl? We are thinking hard about it, "- said Seebeck.