Latest Space plasmas Stories
NASA Many areas of scientific research -- Earth's weather, ocean currents, the outpouring of magnetic energy from the sun -- require mapping out the large scale features of a complex system and its intricate details simultaneously. Describing such systems accurately, relies on numerous kinds of input, beginning with observations of the system, incorporating mathematical equations to approximate those observations, running computer simulations to attempt to replicate observations, and...
Alan McStravick for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online The world was on edge earlier this month when North Korea detonated an underground nuclear explosion (UNE) meant to showcase to the world community the abilities of this beleaguered nation. In a recent story published in The Guardian, reports surfaced North Korea is planning two additional nuclear tests just this year. UNEs were once commonplace, giving the testing nation the knowledge surrounding their nuclear capability. The US...
[Watch Video: Fiery Looping Rain On The Sun] Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online An eruption on the sun can be a beautiful, monstrous event, and NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) has helped to bring these dangerous, yet breathtaking events right to our computer screens. On July 19, 2012, the sun erupted in a solar flare, ejecting material called a coronal mass ejection (CME), creating a loop in the sun's atmosphere known as the corona. This moderately...
NASA As magnetic fields on the sun rearrange and realign, dark spots known as sunspots can appear on its surface. Over the course of Feb. 19-20, 2013, scientists watched a giant sunspot form in under 48 hours. It has grown to over six Earth diameters across but its full extent is hard to judge since the spot lies on a sphere not a flat disk. The spot quickly evolved into what's called a delta region, in which the lighter areas around the sunspot, the penumbra, exhibit magnetic fields...
Michael Harper for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online As it floats around the planet Saturn, the Cassini spacecraft recently got a front row seat to what NASA astronomers are calling an “unusual strong blast of solar wind.” Shortly after this “wind” blew by, Cassini began detecting particles which had been accelerated to ultra-high energies. Particles which are accelerated this much are usually found surrounding far away supernovas. This is good news for the Cassini team, as...
Michael Harper for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online As it turns out, studying our Sun can be rather difficult. It’s not the distance so much that keeps scientists guessing – although that certainly doesn’t help. The Sun’s intense heat also keeps scientists at bay, leaving them to make some of their observations and predictions based purely on context and far away measurements. One thing astronomers have been able to observe is a significant difference in temperatures...
NASA On Earth, scientists can observe weather patterns, and more importantly can predict them, through the use of tens of thousands of weather observatories scattered around the globe. Up in the space surrounding Earth -- a space that seethes with its own space weather made of speeding charged particles and constantly changing magnetic fields that can impact satellites – there are only a handful of spacecraft to watch for solar and magnetic storms. The number of observatories has been...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online For the first time, scientists from the international Cassini spacecraft have detected subatomic particles that have been accelerated to ultra-high energies in a blast of solar wind around Saturn, hinting at the possibility that the ringed planet may have experienced the aftermath of a supernova. According to a report by the European Space Agency (ESA) that appeared recently in the journal Nature Physics, this acceleration may be the...
NASA A smaller version of an instrument now flying on NASA’s Van Allen Probes has won a coveted spot aboard an upcoming NASA-sponsored Cubesat mission — the perfect platform for this pint-size, solid-state telescope. Weighing just 3.3 pounds, the Compact Relativistic Electron and Proton Telescope (CREPT) will “augment the science of a major flagship mission” and demonstrate the effectiveness of two new technologies that make the instrument four times faster than its 30-pound...
NASA Science Rewind to the late 1950s. The Soviet Union had just launched the first artificial satellite, Sputnik. The United States, caught short, was scrambling to catch up, kick-starting a Cold War space race that would last for decades. Space was up for grabs, and it seemed like anything could happen. Into this void stepped the United Nations. In 1958, the General Assembly "recognizing the common interest of mankind in furthering the peaceful use of outer space ... and desiring to...
Latest Space plasmas Reference Libraries
Solar cycles: what are they and why should we care about them? Solar cycles are made up of what are known as solar minimums (min) and solar maximums (max). We refer to a solar min at the time when the sun is not active with many sunspots, while a solar max is just the opposite when we see a large increase in sunspot activity. So how long do solar cycles last? Typically they run on what is known as an 11 year cycle from the max to the min and then start over again anew. As of 2012 we...
Solar Physics is a journal for solar and solar-stellar research and the study of solar terrestrial physics. Founded in 1967 by solar physicist Cornelis de Jager and publisher D. Reidel, the journal treats all aspects of solar physics, ranging from the internal structure of the Sun and its evolution, to outer corona and solar wind in interplanetary space. Solar Physics has four more than forty years been the principal journal for publications of fundamental research on the Sun. It is...
A Radio Atmospheric signal (sometimes referred to as Sferic or Spheric), is a broadband electromagnetic impulse that occurs during atmospheric lightning discharges. Sferics spread out from the lightning source and can be received thousands of miles away. A sferic, depending on atmospheric conditions, may extend anywhere from a few kHz to several tens of kHz. Sferics from far reaching storms, over 1500 miles away, are generally offset in frequency range and may be picked up as tweeks. A...
Hannes Olof Gösta Alfvén (May 30, 1908 - April 2, 1995) was a Swedish plasma physicist born in Norrköping, Sweden. Alfvén received his PhD from the University of Uppsala in 1934. His thesis was titled "Investigations of the Ultra-short Electromagnetic Waves." He was originally trained as an electrical power engineer and later moved on to research and teaching in the fields of plasma physics. Alfvén made many contributions to plasma physics, including theories describing the...
Ring Current -- A ring current is an electric current carried by charged particles trapped in a planet's magnetosphere. It is caused by the longitudinal drift of energetic (10-200 keV) particles. Earth's Ring Current Earth's ring current is responsible for geomagnetic storms. The ring current system consists of a band, at a distance of 3-5 RE(1), which lies in the equatorial plane and circulates clockwise around the Earth (when viewed from the north). The particles of this region...
![Hinode\](/media/gallery/iris-interface-region-imaging-spectrograph/thumbs/thumbs_751917main_highres4_full.jpg "Hinode\")
