Episode 15: Riding the solar wind: Eugene Parker's "magnetic" legacy

On December 24, 2024, NASA's Parker Solar Probe shattered records: becoming simultaneously the closest a human-made object has ever approached the Sun, and, travelling at 430,000 mph, the fastest object ever built on Earth. This was the culmination of a 70-year long legacy of its namesake, Eugene Parker, who in 1958 transformed our understanding of the Sun from a static ball of fire to a dynamic, magnetic entity capable of ejecting extremely hot winds into vast reaches of space. In this episode, we revisit Parker's seminal paper and its impact on exploratory missions of the Solar System for decades after.