Astronomy. But mathematical in a way.
23 year old Cleo Loi, a student, says she has mapped invisible plasma tubes around earth.
“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.”
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