Correction to: Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07480-3 Published online 28 August 2024

In the version of the article initially published, the units for electron density in the “Ambipolar diffusion theory and calculation of altitude plasma density profiles” section of the Methods and Extended Data Fig. 4 were listed as “cm–3” and have now been corrected to “m–3” in the HTML and PDF versions of the article.