Giant Veil of "Cold Plasma" Discovered High Above EarthNews from the ESA Satellite
(http://images.nationalgeographic.com/wpf/media-live/photos/000/476/overrides/cold-plasma-above-earth-cluster-satellite_47690_600x450.jpg)
An artist's rendering of ESA's Cluster II spacecraft in orbit. Illustration courtesy J. Huart, ESAQuoteDave Mosher
for National Geographic News
Published January 26, 2012
Clouds of "cold plasma" reach from the top of Earth's atmosphere to at least a quarter the distance to the moon, according to new data from a cluster of European satellites.
Earth generates cold plasma—slow-moving charged particles—at the edge of space, where sunlight strips electrons from gas atoms, leaving only their positively charged cores, or nuclei.
(Find out how cold plasma might also help explain why Mars is missing its atmosphere.)
Researchers had suspected these hard-to-detect particles might influence incoming space weather, such as this week's solar flare and resulting geomagnetic storm. That's because solar storms barrage Earth with similar but high-speed charged particles.
Still, no one could be certain what the effects of cold plasma might be without a handle on its true abundance around our planet.
"It's like the weather forecast on TV. It's very complicated to make a reasonable forecast without the basic variables," said space scientist Mats André, of the Swedish Institute of Space Physics.
"Discovering this cold plasma is like saying, Oh gosh, there are oceans here that affect our weather," he said.
QuoteCold Plasma a Space Weather "Elephant"
In the end, the pair found that cold plasma makes up between 50 and 70 percent of all charged particles within the farther reaches of Earth's magnetic field.
(Related: "Mini Magnetic Shield Found on the Moon.")
André says it's now time to start updating space-weather models to take the extra cold plasma into account—at this point, for instance, nothing is known about how the plasma might affect solar storms.
This influence is "not a minor thing in space weather," André said. "It's an elephant in the room."
Giant Veil of "Cold Plasma" Discovered High Above Earth (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/01/120126-solar-storm-cold-plasma-earth-space-science/)
Missing Martian Atmosphere: Clues In Earth's Cold Plasma?
Posted by Dave Mosher on January 26, 2012 (http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/files/2012/01/mars-atmosphere-plasma-blog.jpg)
When you look at planets with thin atmospheres like Mars (which has just 1 percent the atmospheric pressure of Earth), scientists like André begin to wonder what role the "blood loss" of cold plasma plays in killing atmospheres. Illustration couretsy NASA/JPL-CaltechQuoteThe invisibility of cold matter has a lot to do with like charges repelling like charges. Sunlight in space strips away electrons from atoms, ionizing any "naked" matter out there to have a positive charge. That includes spacecraft (like Cluster II satellites) and atmospheric gas at the edge of Earth's atmosphere (which creates cold plasma).
Like a magnet's north pole near another magnet's north pole, the spacecraft and cold plasma repel and never meet. "Hot" plasma, on the other hand, is moving fast enough to ignore any magnetic repulsion with a spacecraft, so it's detectable.
Without some clever analysis, cold plasma just doesn't seem to be out there.
But André knew two things. First, that a spacecraft zooming through cold plasma—if it existed—would create a shockwave (i.e. cold plasma piling in front and zipping around to the back). Second, moving charged particles emit electric fields.
André and his colleague paired these facts up to "see" the subtle shockwaves in Cluster II's data. The results imply cold matter constitutes between 50 and 70 percent of all charged particles in Earth's magnetic field! That's quite a jump from zero percent.
The sudden abundance of cold plasma means a few things. Space weather forecasts stand to improve, as cold plasma particles probably interact with incoming hot matter from solar storms—and that dynamic is missing from computer models. Another effect is that the Earth is bleeding off roughly 2.2 pounds (1 kilogram) of atmospheric gas every second.
Missing Martian Atmosphere: Clues In Earth's Cold Plasma? (http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2012/01/26/martian-missing-atmosphere-cold-plasma/)
"Warm Plasma Cloak" Discovered Enveloping Earth
Anne Minard
National Geographic News
January 7, 2009(http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/bigphotos/images/090107-warm-plasma-cloak_big.jpg)
The yellow regions of the diagram above represent the warm plasma cloak within the Earth's magnetosphere, the shield that protects the planet from the sun's solar wind. The layer, identified in fall 2008, reminded researchers of a person on a horse, wearing a long cloak. Image courtesy Rick Chappell QuoteThe Earth is dressed in layers that protect it from the sun's fierce winds, and scientists have identified a new one they call a "warm plasma cloak."
The magnetosphere—the shield of ions and electrons that envelops Earth—extends far beyond the atmosphere, defending the planet from the harmful solar wind.
Charles "Rick" Chappell, a physicist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, led a research team that assembled information dating back decades to describe the new magnetosphere layer.
Some of the first hints of the cloak first showed up in data from research satellites in the early 1970s. The cloak was finally confirmed by NASA's Polar satellite, which ended a 12-year run in April 2008.
The cloak's discovery creates a theoretical home for particles that didn't fit with any of the other understood parts of the Earth's magnetosphere, Chappell said.
"The cloak particles didn't fit with any of the other regions."
The results appeared in fall 2008 in the Journal of Geophysical Research.
Flying Horseman
Chappell and his colleagues called the layer the "warm plasma cloak" because it conjured an image for them of a person on a horse, wearing a long cloak. Plasma is ionized gas found in space.
The cloak's tails billow in response to the direction of solar winds.
The warm plasma cloak begins thinly on the nightside—or darkside—of the planet and wraps around to the dayside, where it becomes thickest until noon. In the afternoon, convective winds push the cloak out toward the edge of the magnetosphere, where it's peeled off by solar winds.
"Warm Plasma Cloak" Discovered Enveloping Earth (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/01/090107-warm-plasma-cloak.html)
European Space Agency's Cluster II spacecraft. (http://www.esa.int/esaSC/120383_index_0_m.html)
Sun's Mysterious Waves Found; May Be Solar Wind Source
Richard A. Lovett
for National Geographic News
December 6, 2007(http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/bigphotos/images/071206-sun-wind_big.jpg)
A large plume of gas known as a prominence shoots hundreds of thousands of miles out from the sun's surface at about six miles (ten kilometers) a second in this image from the Hinode spacecraft. Images like these taken by the Japanese-led mission have definitively revealed mysterious magnetic waves that could be the source of solar wind, a suite of new studies reports. Image © Science QuotePowerful magnetic waves in the sun's atmosphere may be the energy source that drives the solar wind, a suite of new studies from a Japanese-led mission reports.
These so-called Alfvén waves were first predicted by Swedish physicist Hannes Alfvén, who won the 1970 Nobel Prize in Physics for his theory.
The new studies of these waves were made possible by high-resolution instruments on the Hinode satellite, which was launched in September 2006.
Hinode, which means "sunrise" in English, is a joint mission of the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), NASA, the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC), and the European Space Agency (ESA).
The orbiter's instruments allowed researchers to take rapid-fire pictures of various solar structures.
Certain images were then combined into movielike photo sequences that showed how several solar structures interact with the long-suspected magnetic waves.
"These observations are unprecedented," said Jonathan Cirtain, a solar astrophysicist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. "It's just like [the features] are waving at you."
Three different teams, including one led by Cirtain, announce the find in tomorrow's issue of the journal Science.
Sun's Mysterious Waves Found; May Be Solar Wind Source (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/12/071206-sun-wind.html)
Images of Plasma on the Sun(http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/03/photogalleries/wip-week21/images/primary/solar-flare-big.jpg)
Image courtesy Hinode JAXA/NASA QuoteMarch 21, 2007New images released by NASA on Wednesday reveal that the sun's magnetic field is much more turbulent than previously believed.
Among the new views is this never before seen look at the structure of the field rising from a sunspot, which was snapped by the international spacecraft Hinode on November 20, 2006.
"For the first time, we are now able to make out tiny granules of hot gas that rise and fall in the sun's magnetized atmosphere," Dick Fisher, director of NASA's Heliophysics Division, said in a press release.
"These images will open a new era of study on some of the sun's processes that affect Earth, astronauts, orbiting satellites, and the solar system."
National Geographic (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/03/photogalleries/wip-week21/photo3.html)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFb7OZx2NYo
(http://images.nationalgeographic.com/wpf/media-live/photos/000/437/cache/wall-plasma-sun-roel-prominence_43756_600x450.jpg)
Drawing courtesy Roel WeijenbergSolar CloseupQuoteThis pastel drawing of the sun, created by Roel Weijenberg as he looked through his telescope November 14, depicts both a solar prominence and a solar filament.
If energetic enough, solar prominences and filaments can erupt, or be ejected into space, NASA's Gurman explained.
When this happens—about once every few days somewhere on the sun—the loops of gas quickly cool and then dissipate until they are no longer visible.
But when these eruptions are directed toward Earth, they can lead to power outages.
National Geographic (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/11/pictures/111117-sun-walls-plasma-science-space/#/wall-plasma-sun-roel-prominence_43756_600x450.jpg)(http://images.nationalgeographic.com/wpf/media-live/photos/000/437/cache/wall-plasma-sun-friedman-loop_43758_600x450.jpg)
Photograph courtesy Alan FriedmanGiant "Hurl" of PlasmaQuote"This massive prominence stands more than 50,000 miles [80,000 kilometers] high and stretches 150,000 miles [241,000 kilometers] across the edge of the solar disk," solar observer Alan Friedman wrote on his blog after taking this picture November 12 during a visit to the Buffalo Museum of Science in Buffalo, New York.
It's the "biggest hurl of hydrogen plasma that I have seen in years," he added.
Said NASA's Gurman, "You can see the fine-scale features here, which gives you a better idea of how filamented the material in a prominence really is."
National Geographic (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/11/pictures/111117-sun-walls-plasma-science-space/#/wall-plasma-sun-friedman-loop_43758_600x450.jpg)
Images of Plasma on the Sun
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ys9xL3mw8tI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNTiYauL7CY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQyp9y_9s10