You’d think the science on the Van Allen Radiation belts was long ago considered “settled science”. Nope. And yet, while we discover new things like this, some insist we fully understand all aspects of the workings of Earth’s climate.
Instruments detect never-before-seen phenomenon in Earth’s Magnetosphere
The belts are a pair of donut shaped zones of charged particles that surround Earth and occupy the inner region of our planet’s Magnetosphere.
LOS ALAMOS, N.M., March 1, 2013—U.S. researchers, including a trio from Los Alamos National Laboratory, have witnessed the mysterious appearance of a relatively long-lived zone of high-energy electrons stored between Earth’s Van Allen radiation belts.
The surprising findings, discovered by NASA’s Van Allen Probes (formerly known as the Radiation Belt Storm Probes), were outlined Thursday in Science Express and during a press conference at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C. The research was led by Dan Baker of the University of Colorado, Boulder, Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics.
“Nature keeps on surprising us by producing long-lived harsh environments in space in regions not previously considered,” said Los Alamos plasma physicist Reiner Friedel of LANL’s Intelligence and Space Research Division. “This finding may impact the planning of future space missions.”
The Van Allen radiation belts — named in honor James Van Allen, who discovered them nearly 50 years ago — are a pair of donut shaped zones of charged particles that surround Earth and occupy the inner region of our planet’s Magnetosphere. The outer belt contains extremely high-energy electrons, while the inner belt is comprised of energetic protons and electrons. The belts have been studied extensively since the dawn of the Space Age, because the high-energy particles in the outer ring can cripple or disrupt spacecraft. Long-term observation of the belts have hinted that the belts can act as efficient and powerful particle accelerators; the recent observations by the Van Allen Probes—a pair of spacecraft launched in August 2012—now seem to confirm this.
Shortly after launch, the spacecraft activated their Relativistic Electron-Proton Telescope (REPT) instruments to measure particles within the belts and their immediate environs. The instrument immediately detected on September 1, 2012, the presence of a stable zone of high-energy electrons residing between the belts. This donut-shaped third ring nestled between the belts existed for nearly a month before being obliterated by a powerful shockwave of particles emanating from center of the solar system.
Such a distinct, long-lasting ring of high-energy electrons had never before been seen by any prior instrument in space or on Earth. The findings suggest that the Van Allen Belts somehow capture and store energetic electrons in a circular path around our home planet, perhaps in much the same way as a cyclotron can capture and store charged particles here on Earth.
“One of the main reasons the Van Allen Probe instruments are seeing these new features are their unprecedented sensitivity and rejection of backgrounds,” Friedel said. “As the mission proceeds, we expect further surprises that will challenge our conventional wisdom on the transport, loss and energization processes in these highly energetic electron radiation regions.”
In addition to Friedel, Los Alamos research team members include Geoffrey D. Reeves and Michael G. Henderson. The research team is also represented by the Goddard Space Flight Center, University of New Hampshire, The Southwest Research Institute, Dartmouth College, the University of California—Los Angeles, University of Iowa, and The Aerospace Corporation.
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keith
March 4, 2013 at 1:58 pm
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First of all, singularities are mathematically constructable, and a direct consequence of the laws of physics that have been established on top of real experimentation. You seem to be confusing them with some of the classes of non constructable objects that mathematicians sometimes encounter. Anyway, just because something is a mathematical abstraction that does not ~really~ exist does not make it useless. As for me, I will continue to use the axiom of choice.
Holy Smokes. Was it something I said? I discovered the main site promulgating and disseminating the EU theory, and a more curious and open minded bunch one could not find.
It has inspired me to read and try to understand the issues in classical physics and astronomy with a renewed interest. But I open this comment thread, and I find, here where one is supposed to find a island of open-minded debate, and I see that EU talk is way off-limit, and as one mod commented (albeit later retracted), defined as “silliness”.
OK. Then I guess we can then dismiss the beliefs of Hannes Alfven, Nobel Prize Physics 1970, and Birkeland (Birkeland Currents), and …(appeal to authority is long since abhorent to me) so just say quite a long list of very serious and sincere scientists as being “silliness”.
I am frankly stunned. And disappointed, but then again who am I? Just another comparative religion major, who learned the basics of what he knows about weather and climate from John Daly (RIP) via hundreds of hours of reading on his site, and was ‘converted’ from being a knee-jerk follower of ‘consensus science’ by that process.
Let’s see: –
– Major research funding, ‘astronomical’ funding, so-to-speak, for the ‘consensus model’ (CM)
– Celebrity scientists and politicians staking their futures on maintenance of the CM
– An educational system that promotes, to the exclusion of alterate views, the CM, from K-12 through post-secondary.
– Major political and economic capital already invested in the CM (Hadron Collider, anyone?)
Sound familiar? I think we here know it as CAGW, and there’s obviously quite a large and involved community here that fights daily to overcome this entrenched, prejudiced, worldview, all while working underfunded or self-funded, and while often suffering public abuse.
Yet.
Look. Think for a minute. These EU folks strike me (I don’t mean the many flighty types that one can find ‘out on the internets’), as credentialed individuals in their fields who are striving towards Convergence of their disparate expertise to account for the countless, poorly or not-at-all explained observational anomalies that are flooding us with data that DEMANDS explanation, as we extend our ability to measure, to explore, and ultimately, perceive the environment within which we live.
Yes, what they are bringing forward would be devastating to the commonly accepted paradigm within dozens of major scientific fields, should it be supported by repeated and robust experimentation. But to a man and woman, these individuals, who are certainly braving the opprobrium of their confrere, and arguably ‘risking their careers’, stand by and bring forward openly their hypotheses and data – which is WAY more than what we’ve seen from the CAGW crowd, as we well know.
So look, PLEASE. One thing I remember quite well from my studies, now some 40 years ago, was Thomas Kuhn’s “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”. Do I have to elucidate?
This is a CLIMATE site, (mostly, per the banner), and I GET THAT. But to “ban” relevant data and postulates, when it’s clear that the Mainstream doesn’t understand the implications and really has no ‘explanatory models’, seems to me to be the very thing that WUWT is supposed to stand AGAINST! My opinion, for what it is worth, is that if data and scientific speculation is available that brings data ON TOPIC forward to address the unknown, it should be welcomed, and subjected to examination and criticism just like anything else.
When I saw the title of this post, I’d just come away from a short video posting at Thunderbolts, discussing (in part) precisely the issues implicit in the discovery (it’s not actually new, the third ring thing, though – maybe the degree it’s populated by electrons though), I thought YAY! I can bring something of value to the conversation! So I dutifully read the comment thread and came across the mod’s comment.
I’m going to post the link to this video (it’s professional enough and pretty, too – just 7 minutes) right after this comment, because I want what I say here to appear as is, as I believe it to be of critical importance.
I just have to wonder, have the critics here of the EU model actually taken some time to see to where the EU movement has progressed in the last 2-3 years? It’s not Sagans crystals and wicca anymore, I can assure you. Or perhaps ‘you’ are more comfortable just seeing comets as they once were, dirty snowballs conglomorating in “the Oort Cloud”. Don’t let me disturb.
Bones says
Neutron stars are supposed to have a diameter of apprx 20 km. We do not have measuring devices capable of measuring anything of that size from the distances these objects are away from us. Therefore their size is unknown. From x-ray photos they look like an elevtric dipole motor and I go with Keith.
Steve B says:
March 4, 2013 at 7:07 pm
Bones says
Neutron stars are supposed to have a diameter of apprx 20 km. We do not have measuring devices capable of measuring anything of that size from the distances these objects are away from us. Therefore their size is unknown. From x-ray photos they look like an elevtric dipole motor and I go with Keith.
———————————————————————————
Sorry, I did not say any of the above.
There are images of isolated neutron stars that have soft thermal x-ray spectra. Their sizes are revealed via the area dependence in the Stefan-Boltzmann law. You may be thinking of images of the Crab pulsar.
One small step forward for climate non consensus… one giant leap back for the universe. Who would have thought WUWT was a consensus science site. Im getting to the point that I need to find another sight for interesting lively discussions on these topics, because the atmosphere has turned ugly.. and you may just as well be calling us deniers if we don’t follow the teachings of the all knowing consensus. Lets see, call us stupid.. check! Belittle us… Check! Tell us we just can’t understand the science… Check! Delete or deny topics of discussion… CHECK!! Pretty damn sad! Ps.. I don’t have a pony in the EU debate, but I’m usually the one who gets to decide what I should believe and not believe.
Tiburon says:
March 4, 2013 at 6:47 pm
Holy Smokes. Was it something I said? I discovered the main site promulgating and disseminating the EU theory, and a more curious and open minded bunch one could not find.
The problem with EU is that they have cause and effect backwards. Now, everything interest in the Universe are caused by either gravity or by electric currents [and gravity is ultimately also responsible for those]. But to get an electric current you must separate opposite electric charges so that they can neutralize via an electric current. Nature’s way of doing that is by the means of magnetic fields. Magnetic fields deflects opposite charges in opposite directions thus creating the necessary charge separation. Plasmas are fundamentally electrically neutral as any deviation from neutrality is quickly shorted out due to the high conductivity of the plasma. You often hear that the Sun emits streams of ‘charged particles’. This is very true as you and I [and almost anything] also consist of charged particles, but that does not mean that only one charge is present. In fact, both are present in equal measure. Electric currents in a plasma can come about because the plasma moves in a magnetic field. When the opposite charges ‘find each other’ interesting stuff happens and things can blow up. So, electric currents are transient by-products of neutral plasma moving in magnetic fields. My old friend Hannes Alfven knew this, but Birkeland did not. The EU posits strong currents cursing through the Universe without anything driving them and THAT is the wrong part. EU even goes along with the wrong notion that such currents power the Sun and not nuclear fusion [whose by-product, neutrinos, we directly observe in precisely the predicted amount]. EU is junk ‘science’ or even anti-science. There is a whole substratum of people denouncing modern science: Big Bang, General Relativity, Black Holes, Neutron Stars, what have you. All the things that make the Universe interesting and understandable. This is very sad, indeed. Carl Sagan called this the ‘Demon-haunted World’, and it at times seems that the Demons are winning.
except “Plasmas are fundamentally electrically neutral as any deviation from neutrality is quickly shorted out due to the high conductivity of the plasma. ”
IS (as far as I am aware) NOT TRUE.
I believe that Hannes Alfen used his Nobel prize winning speech to retract his earlier statements to that effect, and he was the guy that said it in the first place.
So please go back to the drawing board Mr. Lief, and redo all your work, correcting for Hannes Alfen’s retraction.
See thats the problem, when assumptions thrown in from the past change, no one goes back to the drawing board as is required. i.e. when Huxley’s monkeys was shown to be a false analogue, everyone carried on as if nothing had happened.
I’m still get excited about new info and discoveries. I still get excited, in a different way, when somebody tries to lay a big trip on me. Got something to say, say it. Got something to prove and cockin’ off while you do it… liable to get a proverbial hair- lip laid on ya.
@Tiburon, BigD, et al…
EU Theory isn’t as far off the map and deep into Tripnuttia as “chemtrails”, for instance, but those aren’t allowed to be discussed here, either.
Leif, the only time the Demons win is when they can end the discussions. There is strong evidence in favor of the Big Bang. General Relativity predicted things that were previously unknown that were confirmed. Neutron stars let us understand pulsars. Black holes are good working models of gravitationally collapsed objects, etc., but it does not follow that “modern science” shouldn’t be questioned. What might seem like nonsense at the moment might lead to a deeper understanding later. The problem with much of “modern science” these days is that it is too much controlled by gatekeepers who view it as their right and duty to protect consensus views.
I have a completely open mind about what parts EM and plasmas play in the universe. But in the early stages of an email conversation with one gentleman, who I won’t name, he referenced this:
I thought the timing of this was ironic.
Shades of “settled science”! “The vast majority” – we here should be the last people on the planet taking THAT as a reason to accept a scientific POV.
We all know quotes from people who’ve said some version of, “It only takes one particular piece of evidence to refute what is thought to be true and isn’t.”
I try to keep a collection of new discoveries that make scientists say things like, “Oh, gosh! Our theories don’t include THAT at all!”
Science basks in its claims that it isn’t science unless it correctly predicts. When the “silly” side predicts something, and it turns out to be true, the “vast majority” Harumph! and Ahem! and blather on about how the Silly Party just got lucky. Shades of you know what Doctor whose last name started with V. He who shall not be named.
Harumphs and ahems are all that can be voiced when something completely out of the blue – and that has not even remotely been on the radar (pun intended) – comes along.
(A tip of the hat to Steve C) That it is in our own back yard, should it have us here drawing parallels to climate forecasts out 100 years, when climate guys don’t even know what is out there 10 years? Thus it begs the question of astronomers, too – should we take their long-range ideas with more than a grain of salt, too?
Seriously? This should put the “vast majority” back on their heels. They got nuttin’.
Steve Garcia
p.s. I wonder if the launches of such probes create office pools at LANL, as to what will be found. I’d like to be a fly on the wall reading the guesses.
“Nature keeps on surprising us by producing long-lived harsh environments in space in regions not previously considered,” said Los Alamos plasma physicist Reiner Friedel of LANL’s Intelligence and Space Research Division. “This finding may impact the planning of future space missions.”
What about the Apollo missions?
@DesertYote says:
March 4, 2013 at 5:26 pm
When I first read the PR on NASA last week, the main thing that surprised me was that anyone would be surprised, then I got to the line “the Van Allen Probes showed scientists something that would require rewriting textbooks.” Sheesh.
+++++++++++++++
Yeah, this happens in one or more sciences every year, pretty much. I’ve come to expect them.
The funniest thing is you saying “then I got to the line” blah, blah, blah. YES – it is always DEEP into the article, where hopefully few will ever see it – that science books will have to now be re-written. Ouch!
I call those moments “Science Does It Again.” I LOVE it when they say, “Well, that blows our whole idea , and now we have to go back and re-think everything we thought we knew about this.”
For a brief moment in time, the “humble scientist” mantle is worn.
But in Act II they all act like, “Well, we knew that all along.”
Steve Garcia
Re: Alternate theories of the universe and its interactions with the earth….
The flux tube that connects the Earth and the sun carries energetic particles that cause sub storms which are modulated by flux transfer events better know as reconnections. These flows of particles(electrons, protons and ions) do work. They can be considered an electric current originating on the sun. The strength of this current can affect the weather on earth, maybe the climate.
Flux transfer event
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flux_transfer_event
The only way you are going to get the movement of particles down the flux tube is by a potential difference(electric field across) from end to end of the flux tube.
The layers on the sun with the coolest at the bottom can best explained by an electric field that accelerates the particles as they leave the surface… No ballistic mechanism or magnetic waves are going to do it…
The sun is a converter, not a storage device….. Very important realization…
After studying the sun for, I dont know, 8 years I was forced to come up with an alternate theory as to how the sun operates because I could not find any mainstream theory that worked. They claim they do but they fall apart under scrutiny.
What I did was use known phenomena no matter what the branch of science to explain all the features on the sun. My model works its just highly unconventional… But thats how science is really done. By the little guys…..
http://thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4592
Electric fields are all around you… Plasma only needs 1% ionization… We live in a plasma and most plasmas are caused by electric fields…
I dont expect you to post this but at least examine what you are saying when you say “nonsense” to alternate theories of the universe that have been worked on purely for observational sciences sake… It makes you sound like the science by consensus Liberal Warmers….
Brant
bones says:
March 4, 2013 at 9:46 pm
Leif, the only time the Demons win is when they can end the discussions.
Real science is full of discussions. That is what science is about. Modern science is questioned all the time, by scientists. It is nonsense to believe that modern science is ‘consensus’ science. Such notion comes from science illiterate people. The Demons win when the level of scientific knowledge of the public at large has sunk to the level of EU. We are not there yet, but we are getting closer. Paradoxically, the Internet, which one would think would be a fantastic medium for education of the public, is now the foremost dispenser of pseudo-science.
@lsvalgaard:
It is really even sadder when Sagan has to literally demonize those who dare to think differently from him. It is a strategy used during wars to make their enemies seem less than human.
Shame on Sagan for saying such a thing in public about anyone at all, and shame on ya for quoting it in an obvious coattail demonization of those here you don’t agree with. Just stick to the evidence, could you please? Name calling doesn’t get anyone anywhere.
Don’r forget, though, it was Sagan who played such a big part in using Venus (with its 96.5% CO2 atmosphere) and extrapolated the “greenhouse effect” there to Earth, with it’s ~0.032% (then) CO2 atmosphere. Of course, if he hadn’t, Anthony wouldn’t have this wonderful site.
Steve Garcia
Brant Ra says:
March 4, 2013 at 10:28 pm
The flux tube that connects the Earth and the sun carries energetic particles that cause sub storms which are modulated by flux transfer events better know as reconnections. These flows of particles(electrons, protons and ions) do work. They can be considered an electric current originating on the sun.
No, that is not how things work. The ‘reconnection’ is a magnetic phenomenon. The substorms are not caused by energetic particles from the sun, but by storage of magnetic field in the ‘tail’ of the Earth’s magnetosphere. Such stored magnetic field energy is unstable and when the equilibrium breaks down, the energy is release and accelerates particles in the tail towards the Earth. Changes in the magnetic field cause the electric fields and currents. There are no electric currents originating in the Sun. The solar wind plasma is electrically neutral. The rest of your comment is also wrong, but it quickly becomes tedious to debunk things that are so obviously off the mark.
Newton’s gravity was quite popular before the space age, when people thought the universe was empty (in between celestial objects). Now we are discovering vast plasma currents that interact with celestial objects in ways that suggest it is more than just a bit player, or a by-product.
I predict in two decades it will be the believers in Newtonian gravity as the only celestial-scale force who will be dismissed and laughed at, like electric universe believers are now.
Take these Fermi bubbles for example:
NASA Mystified By Enormous Energy Field
Or, another example, why do solar flares change earth’s length of day? How does Newton’s gravity account for that? Or take the epi-cycle-like patches like dark matter and dark energy. Dark, because they can’t see it! (Maybe ’cause it’s not there). For some, I guess the science of celestial mechanics is settled!
feet2thefire says:
March 4, 2013 at 10:44 pm
Shame on Sagan for saying such a thing in public about anyone at all, and shame on ya for quoting it in an obvious coattail demonization of those here you don’t agree with. Just stick to the evidence, could you please? Name calling doesn’t get anyone
You misunderstand Sagan [and me]: It is not people that are Demons, but wrong ideas, bad science, superstition, ignorance, blatant nonsense, etc. It is the success of superficial thinking, easy explanations, ‘layman terms’, etc. Real science is HARD. Very hard. People want easy solutions, simple concepts that doesn’t require much effort, comfort thinking, etc.
Sorry Bones
I said that about the size of Neutron stars. I was on a smartphone and my big fingers got in the way and it came out all wrong. You replied though that mats was used to work out their size.
Who says the math is correct?
So let me see if I have this right. We have NASA’s new belt of highly charged electrons, and the long known about ring current, whose energy is mostly carried by protons and positively charged ions. They don’t short out double quick because they are within Earth’s plasmasphere, which consists of ‘double layers’ which maintain charge separation via ‘frozen in’ magnetic fields. But current flows from charge difference when there is a ‘disturbance in the force’ and the ring current is much stronger on the day side of Earth.
That would seem to indicate that buffeting of the magnetosphere by the solar wind produces downward propagating waves which disturb the double layers, causing the discharge of energy and flow of current. This leads to changes in the upper troposphere affecting ionisation levels and therefore cloud formation. Cloud albedo change has a much bigger effect on the surface energy budget than changes in chemical composition in the lower atmosphere because convection dominates the rate at which energy flows upwards back to space.
The more than averagely active Sun 1935-2003 obviously affected Earth’s climate in other ways than by the small increase in total wattage arriving at the top of the atmosphere. Mainstream climate science studiously ignores anything apart from this, despite the obvious fact that cloud albedo is linked to solar activity levels, as evidenced by the good match between paleo proxies of solar activity levels and reconstructed temperature.
lsvalgaard says:
March 4, 2013 at 10:36 pm
Real science is full of discussions. That is what science is about. Modern science is questioned all the time, by scientists. It is nonsense to believe that modern science is ‘consensus’ science. Such notion comes from science illiterate people….It is not people that are Demons, but wrong ideas, bad science, superstition, ignorance, blatant nonsense, etc. It is the success of superficial thinking, easy explanations, ‘layman terms’, etc. Real science is HARD. Very hard. People want easy solutions, simple concepts that doesn’t require much effort, comfort thinking, etc.
Of course its consensus science. What do you think we’ve had rammed down our throats for the last 40 years since Stephen Schneider got help from computer programmers at Stanford to create the first co2 driven climate models? He made sure the consensus was maintained by ‘deciding on the right balance between truth and effectiveness’. Then he enlisted the help of able propagandist Al Gore to demonise sceptics as being in the pay of vested interests. The mainstream media was successfully duped by consensus scientist advocates who convinced them to shut down debate.
And the blogs have been infiltrated by ‘scientists’ who do the same thing by trying to convince the majority that those with alternative explanations are peddling “wrong ideas, bad science, superstition, ignorance, blatant nonsense, etc.”
But Leif was a close colleague of Stephen Schneider’s and he knows all this anyway.
lsvalgaard says:
March 4, 2013 at 3:16 pm
But since there is no such link, nothing will happen [and it should happen only then and not at times where there is no lineup]. But, as a prediction, you post is significant. But in keeping with the scientific method, if nothing happens, you must drop the idea. Conversely if shown correct.
Hi doc
Nothing like a WUWT thread with Dr.S v.s.‘all comers’
Insurance policy against prediction failure is in the preceding sentence as a person who turns everything into ‘pseudoscience’ .
– However. since NASA also claims there is an electric and magnetic link to the Earth
NASA’s fleet of THEMIS spacecraft discovered a flux rope pumping a 650,000 Amp current into the Arctic. “The satellites have found evidence for magnetic ropes connecting Earth’s upper atmosphere directly to the Sun,” says Dave Sibeck, project scientist for the mission at the Goddard Space Flight Center. “We believe that solar wind particles flow in along these ropes, providing energy for geomagnetic storms”. Even more impressive was the substorm’s power. Angelopoulos estimates the total energy of the two-hour event at five hundred thousand billion (5 x 1014) Joules. That’s approximately equivalent to the energy of a magnitude 5.5 earthquake.
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/203795main_FluxPower_400.jpg
and the Jupiter’s magnetic field is some orders of magnitude stronger than Earth’s, albeit five times further, a similar physical process taking place could be postulated.
– If such connections indeed do exist, then the heliocentric arc of the connection is only part of the circle and Earth will sweep across it every 400 days.
– Ap index during August & September 2012 was about average, but there was a strongish burst in mid July.
– We have to wait and see and find out if the anomaly can be substantiating.
bones: wrote “Sorry, guy. I have worked many years on neutron stars.”
Then you need a little lecture on the difference between conjecture and science, and reality and the imagination.
First of all you have measured or even photographed, pulses of radiation, nothing more and nothing less.
Then imagine a mass the size of a star/large or small rotating at the speed of a dentist drill. And if you believe that then you are in cloud cuckoo land. Oh, you believe that neutron stars are some new denser type of matter that has NEVER been observed, just hypothesised and modelled. That is not science that is CONJECTURE.
Think how much time you have wasted in your life believing in the impossible, when other explanations exist. Oh, you haven’t considered those? In which case in what way can what you are doing be called science?
As an engineer if I told you that my bridge was only 98% there would you cross it? NO, so you cosmologists who cant even find the missing mass to fit your fudge factors are a little low on any “reality credibilty” coefficient. There is absolutely no doubt that massive astronomical objects compact enough to be black holes exist.
Again you have observed, pulses of radiation. For which we have terrestrially viable explanations.
K
lsvalgaard says:
March 4, 2013 at 10:45 pm
Changes in the magnetic field cause the electric fields and currents. There are no electric currents originating in the Sun.
Do you think that magnetic field is somehow independent of electricity?
I thought the only manifestation of magnetic field is the force between accelerated charged particles.
Magnetic field is rather a kind of abstraction layer, not a real phenomena.
There is no such thing as magnetic particle, no magnetic field storage, it’s all electric.