This was a weirdly written article. Scientists have known for a long time that the Earth's magnetic field connects with the Sun's, and that along those connect

This was a weirdly written article. Scientists have known for a long time that the Earth's magnetic field connects with the Sun's, and that along those connected paths stream a lot of ejected Sun material in the form of plasma. To call that a portal seems like a bizarre attempt at exciting public interest. The big discovery here, that was done by Scudder, was to have found places where that magnetic field connects with the Earth's magnetic field, called reconnection points. The other discovery was they appear transient, and to me was not surprising.