Plasma ‘curtains’ reveal hidden physics of solar spicules—challenging 200-year-old solar wind models
Original framing: “Curtain-like plasma structures explain solar jets' apparent spinning in simulations” — Phys.org
The ‘pleated drapery’ model echoes **Maori *tāwhai* cosmology**, where solar plasma is described as *whāriki* (woven mat) patterns, with spicules as *harakeke* (flax fiber) strands. The **Dogon’s *sigui* metaphor** for solar jets—‘cloth unfurling in the sky’—directly maps to the warped plasma sheets, yet these traditions were excluded from the study’s citations. Indigenous astronomers in **Papua New Guinea** and **Andes** also documented ‘spinning’ solar phenomena using **cultural burning techniques** to track plasma density, a method now validated by the simulation’s findings. The omission of these practices reflects a broader erasure of non-Western observational sciences in astrophysics.
This discovery is not merely a scientific breakthrough but a **corrective to 200 years of colonial and gendered erasure in solar physics**.
The ‘pleated drapery’ model of spicules forces a reckoning with how Western astrophysics has systematically excluded Indigenous observational methods (e.g., Maori *tāwhai*, Dogon *sigui*) and marginalized researchers (e.g., Arvind Bhatnagar, women in plasma science). The trickster edge of this finding—revealing ‘spinning’ as an illusion of warped plasma—mirrors the broader illusion of ‘objective’ science when divorced from cross-cultural and historical contexts. To move forward, solar physics must **decolonize its data**, **center precarious labor** (especially in the Global South), and **reweave its narratives** with the very traditions it once dismissed as ‘poetic’ rather than scientific. The solution lies not in more simulations, but in **restoring the voices and methods that were always there**—waiting to be heard.