The closer one looks at the universe, the more mysterious it seems. Recently, NASA’s Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk (GOLD) mission revealed bizarre C- and X-shaped structures floating in the electrified layer of the ionosphere. “Who Knew Earth’s Upper Atmosphere Was Like Alphabet Soup?” NASA wrote about the recording on its website. The two papers describing these C- and X-shaped features are published in the November 2023 and April 2024 Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics.
Who knew Earth’s upper atmosphere was like alphabet soup?
NASA’s Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk (GOLD) mission found surprising C and X shapes in the electrified layer of gas high above our heads called the ionosphere.
Learn more: https://t.co/gMXEkBPTFf pic.twitter.com/3QLU0eQYvW
— NASA Sun & Space (@NASASun) June 27, 2024
GOLD is NASA’s first science mission to “fly as a hosted payload on an otherwise unrelated commercial satellite.” Its primary goal is to study the interface where Earth’s upper atmosphere meets the surrounding space. GOLD controls the forces acting on this layer to control terrestrial weather and satellite communications. While these alphabetic shapes have been observed before, GOLD was able to capture them more clearly.
“The fact that we have very different bubble shapes so close together tells us that the dynamics of the atmosphere are more complex than we expected,” said Jeffrey Klenzing, a scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, who studies the ionosphere.
The alphabet soup was observed in the atmospheric layer called the “ionosphere,” which extends about 50 to 400 miles and is above the clouds but below space. The name ionosphere comes from the fact that the gases in these layers are excited by sunlight to form ions that have an electrical charge. It grows and shrinks depending on the energy it absorbs from the Sun. During the day, the layer is electrically charged by sunlight, knocking electrons off atoms and molecules. This creates a soup of charged particles called plasma that swirls in the ionosphere.
At night, when these particles are unable to feed off the Sun’s energy, pockets of low-density plasma called bubbles form. This particle paradise overlaps with Earth’s magnetosphere. Here, the charged particles perform a ballet on the Earth’s magnetic field. The charged particles, which emit a bright and colorful glow near Earth’s magnetic equator, rise up and out along the magnetic field lines, creating two dense bands of particles north and south of the equator that scientists call ridges. These ridges and bubbles can interfere with radio signals and satellite communications.
While previous observations provided brief glimpses of ridges and bubbles in the ionosphere, GOLD tracked these features over long periods of time using its geostationary orbit, which circles the Earth at the same rate as it rotates. The instrument previously revealed that the X-shape formed after a massive solar storm from a volcanic eruption, but finding it without such occurrences is something strange. “X is special because it means there are a lot more localized driving factors,” Klenzing said. “This is expected during extreme events, but seeing it during a ‘quiet time’ suggests that activity in the lower atmosphere is significantly driving the ionospheric structure.”
The X-shaped plasma was accompanied by another unexpected C-shaped bubble. When GOLD discovered these strange C-shaped bubbles, scientists’ first thought was that these bubbles were shaped by Earth’s winds. “It’s a bit like a tree growing in a windy area,” Kleenzing explained. “If the winds are typical in the east, the tree will start to lean and grow in that direction.”
The first report of these C-shaped formations was published by scientist Deepak Karan of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP). Karan and his colleagues reported that these C-shaped bubbles were up to 400 miles apart in the ionosphere. “In this close proximity, these two opposite plasma bubbles have never been thought of, never been shown,” Karan said, adding that it is likely some severe turbulence such as a vortex, wind shear, or tornado-like activity. while playing in the atmosphere.
Scientists believe that studying this alphabet soup is of utmost importance. “It’s really important to find out why this is happening,” Karan said. “If there is a vortex or a very strong shear in the plasma, it completely distorts the plasma in that region.” With such strong interference, the signals are completely lost.” Hopefully, the trigger for these alphabets will be discovered soon.