- JUNE 02, 2015
Astronomers make real-time, 3D movies of plasma tubes drifting overhead: CAASTRO
AN AUSTRALIAN scientist has discovered that giant, invisible, moving plasma tubes fill the skies above Earth.
It’s a finding that was initially met with a considerable degree of scepticism within the field of astrophysics, but a University of Sydney undergraduate student Cleo Loi, 23, has proven that the phenomenon exists.
By using a radio telescope in the West Australian outback to see space in 3D, Ms Loi has proven that the Earth’s atmosphere is embedded with these strangely shaped, tubular plasma structures. The complex, multilayered ducts are created by the atmosphere being ionised by sunlight.
“For over 60 years, scientists believed these structures existed, but by imaging them for the first time, we’ve provided visual evidence that they are really there,” said Ms Loi, of the Australia Research Council Centre of Excellence for All-sky Astrophysics (CAASTRO).
“We measured their position to be about 600km above the ground, in the upper ionosphere, and they appear to be continuing upwards into the plasmasphere.
“This is around where the neutral atmosphere ends, and we are transitioning to the plasma of outer space.
“We saw a striking pattern in the sky where stripes of high-density plasma neatly alternated with stripes of low-density plasma. This pattern drifted slowly and aligned beautifully with the Earth’s magnetic field lines, like aurorae.
“We realised we may be onto something big.”
An artist’s impression of tubular plasma structures in the Earth’s magnetosphere. Source: Supplied
The breakthrough came when Ms Loi used the remote telescope, the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA), to map large patches of the sky in a new way.
By separating the signals from tiles in the east from the ones in the west, the astronomers gave the MWA — a set of 128 antenna tiles spread over 9sq km in the desert — the power to see in 3D.
“This is like turning the telescope into a pair of eyes, and by that we were able to probe the 3D nature of these structures and watch them move around,” Ms Loi said.
“We were able to measure the spacing between them, their height above the ground and their steep inclination. This has never been possible before and is a very exciting new technique.”
Ms Loi told news.com.au that her research was initially dismissed as being based on imperfections in the telescope images.
“They had never seen this type of thing before. No one had looked at the data in this way before,” she said.
“A lot of the people were pretty convinced is was some problem with the imaging, that it was nothing to get excited about.
“But, I guess being a student and being a bit stubborn, I was so curious, so mystified.
“I was careful about what had happened, and that’s how everyone came to be convinced that it had to be something else.
“We found that the ionisation patterns in the ionosphere are quite structured. They flow in these tubular structures that are aligned with the Earth’s magnetic field. And they can then move of their own accord.”
University of Sydney astrophysics student Cleo Loi has made a remarkable discovery. Source: Supplied
Ms Loi said the drifting plasma tubes could distort astronomical data, especially satellite-based navigation systems. It may also mean we need to re-evaluate our thinking about how galaxies, stars and clouds of gas behave and what they look like.
Ms Loi’s supervisor Tara Murphy said her work was impressive.
“It is to Cleo’s great credit that she not only discovered this but also convinced the rest of the scientific community. As an undergraduate student with no prior background in this, that is an impressive achievement,” said Dr Murphy, also of CAASTRO and the School of Physics at the University of Sydney.
“When they first saw the data, many of her senior collaborators thought the results were literally ‘too good to be true’ and that the observation process had somehow corrupted the findings, but over the next few months, Cleo managed to convince them that they were both real and scientifically interesting.”
Ms Loi’s research has been published in Geophysical Research Letters.
By using a telescope in a new way, University of Sydney student Cleo Loi has detected the existence of tubular plasma structures in the atmosphere surrounding Earth.Source: Supplied
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Earth's immediate vicinity is occupied by its magnetic field, called its magnetosphere, but it is also filled with plasma that is created when the atmosphere is 'ionised' - electrically charged - by sunlight.
The innermost layer of Earth's magnetosphere is the ionosphere, and above that is the plasmasphere.
They are embedded with a variety of strangely shaped plasma structures including, as has now been confirmed, the tubes.
Ms Loi told MailOnline that each tube was roughly six to 30 miles (10 to 50km) in width and stretched for at least several hundred kilometres, and possibly several thousand.
As to what these tubes do, Ms Loi said they may have a ‘possibly significantly role to play in moderating the energies of the radiation belts’ that surround Earth.
Understanding them could also help with regards to radio astronomy and satellite communications, which can be distorted by the tubes.
Ms Loi used a radio telescope in the Western Australian desert to make the discovery, called the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA).
This uses 128 antenna 'tiles' spread over the ground across an area 1.15 square miles (3 square km), and by splitting them into two groups she created a pair of 'eyes' to observe Earth's atmosphere.
The method enabled her to not only detect the existence of plasma tubes above Earth, but also 'probe the 3D nature of these structures and watch them move around,' she said.
She added: 'We measured their position to be about 600 kilometres [370 miles] above the ground, in the upper ionosphere, and they appear to be continuing upwards into the plasmasphere.
'This is around where the neutral atmosphere ends, and we are transitioning to the plasma of outer space.'
Using the MWA, Ms Loi found she could map large patches of the sky and even exploit the MWA's rapid snapshot capabilities to create a movie - effectively capturing the real-time motions of the plasma.
'We saw a striking pattern in the sky where stripes of high-density plasma neatly alternated with stripes of low-density plasma,' she said.
'This pattern drifted slowly and aligned beautifully with the Earth's magnetic field lines, like aurorae.
'We realised we may be onto something big and things got even better when we invented a new way of using the MWA.'
Ms Loi has been awarded the 2015 Bok Prize of the Astronomical Society of Australia for her work.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3107166/Giant-plasma...
Well I never knew this and puzzling why didn't anyone know about this ...NASA and other space agencies never mentioned this ...the holy scriptures never mentioned this ...the large observatories never mentioned this ...I am perplexed in bewilderment