NASA Discovers New Source of Magnetic Storms Near Earth

Beyond Earth's atmosphere are whirling clouds of ions and electrons that emanate from the sun. This "sun wind" strikes the magnetosphere, the magnetic force area that surrounds Earth.

Strong gusts of solar wind penetrating the magnetosphere can generate magnetic storms with active electric powered currents that can affect our lives the same manner winds and storms create a climate in our atmosphere.

New research by the NASA THEMIS mission team - led with the help of Vassilis Angelopoulos, a UCLA professor of area physics - is the first to show that such storms can cause significant damage toward Earth than previously thought, overlapping with the orbits of crucial climate, communications, and GPS satellites. The team's conclusions are published in the journal Nature Physics.

Magnetic storms could produce astounding northern lights or risky particles careening towards spacecraft and astronauts, zapping them out of commission. Magnetic storms could disable the electrical grid, disrupt radio communications, and corrode pipelines, even creating excessive aurora visible near the equator under positive conditions.

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An incident that illustrates the dramatic energy of magnetic storms came about in 1921 when the sort of typhoon disrupted telegraph communications and caused power outages that led to the burning of a New York City train station. The Apollo 16 and 17 astronauts narrowly overlooked what might have been a lethal sun eruption in 1972.

These incidents underscore the potential dangers that need to be assessed by more humans missions into orbit. If a comparable typhoon came about today, a separate study estimated financial losses in the U.S. because of electric blackouts handiest may surpass US$ 40 billion a day.

How electric currents in space have an impact on the aurora and magnetic storms has been long debated within the area physics community. Because the storms occur so rare and satellite coverage is sparse, it has been clear for researchers to topple on the dynamic system that powers those storms.

Solar wind magnetic strength, when transferred into the magnetosphere, builds up until it's far converted into hear and particle acceleration via a process known as magnetic reconnection. After many years of research, it's now still unclear to researchers where exactly magnetic reconnection takes place at some point of storms.

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Recent observations with the aid of more than one satellites have proven that magnetic storms can be initiated through magnetic reconnection a great deal toward Earth than previously idea possible.

The 3 NASA THEMIS satellites observed magnetic reconnection handiest approximately three to 4 Earth diameters away. The researchers did now not expect this will happen inside the comparatively stable magnetic subject configuration close to Earth.

Later, a weather satellite, which was closer to Earth in geostationary orbit, detected energized debris related to magnetic storms.

The weather satellite proved that this near-Earth reconnection inspired ion and electron acceleration to high energies, posing a danger to loads of satellites running in this not unusual orbit. Such particles can harm electronics and human DNA, increasing the hazard of radiation poisoning and cancer for astronauts. Some particles may even enter the environment and affect airline passengers.

"Only with such direct measurements of magnetic reconnection and its resulting power flows could we convincingly show such an unexpected mechanism of hurricane power generation," said Angelopoulos, who's lead writer of the paper. "Capturing this uncommon event, closer to Earth than ever detected before, forces us to revise previous assumptions approximately the reconnection system."

This discovery will, in the long run, assist scientists in refining predictive models of how the magnetosphere responds to the solar wind, providing treasured more hours or even days to put together satellites, astronauts and the strength grid for the next "big one" in space.