From Telescope.com:
Every science fiction fan is familiar with the concept of an interdimensional "portal," or an opening in the fabric of space and time that allows space voyagers to travel faster than the speed of light, through "hyperspace," as a quick shortcut to anywhere, or any-when, in the universe.
The fictional concept is based upon the theory of "wormholes" in quantum physics, which are short "tunnels" that superluminally connect distant points of the space-time continuum with one another through a higher dimension.
Related to the notion of wormholes in quantum physics are "magnetic portals" in astrophysics, as both types of phenomena allow for distant points in space to be closely connected in ways that seem to defy conventional logic.
NASA recently reported that University of Iowa plasma physicist Jack Scudder discovered that there are regions in the Earth's magnetic field that directly connect it to the magnetic field of the sun, circumventing 93 million miles of space.
These mysterious regions, known as "magnetic portals" are thought to be opening and closing dozens of times every day.
The appearing and disappearing portals are generally located many thousands of miles above the earth, in the upper atmosphere, and a large number of particles flow back and forth through these openings.
The particles flow through these portals as if there was no space between our earth's magnetic field and the sun's, and this interchange can have dramatic effects.
According to the NASA press release about this discovery, "Tons of energetic particles can flow through the openings, heating Earth's upper atmosphere, sparking geomagnetic storms, and igniting bright polar auroras."...MORE
