The Earth's zebraprint jacket: Nasa discovers new giant striped structure in the planet's radiation belt
- Electrons in the inner radiation belt display giant zebra pattern
- Stripes caused by the rotation of the Earth
PUBLISHED: 23:03 GMT, 20 March 2014 | UPDATED: 13:22 GMT, 21 March 2014
Scientists have uncovered a mysterious structure that surround the earth rather like a giant zebraprint jacket.
The strange structure has never been seen before, and initially baffled scientists.
Stripes extend through the inner radiation belt, moving as the Earth rotates.
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The stripes that surround Earth: Two giant belts of radiation surround Earth. The inner belt is dominated by electrons and the outer one by protons.
RADIATION BELTS
The radiation belts are dynamic doughnut-shaped regions around our planet, extending high above the atmosphere, made up of high-energy particles, both electrons and charged particles called ions, which are trapped by Earth's magnetic field.
Radiation levels across the belts are affected by solar activity that causes energy and particles to flow into near-Earth space.
Scientists discovered the new, persistent structure in one of two radiation belts surrounding Earth.
NASA's twin Van Allen Probes spacecraft spotted the pattern, which that resembles slanted zebra stripes.
The structure is produced by the slow rotation of Earth, previously considered incapable of affecting the motion of radiation belt particles, which have velocities approaching the speed of light.
Scientists had previously believed that increased solar wind activity was the primary force behind any structures in our planet's radiation belts.
However, these zebra stripes were shown to be visible even during low solar wind activity, which prompted a new search for how they were generated.
'It is because of the unprecedented resolution of our energetic particle experiment, RBSPICE, that we now understand that the inner belt electrons are, in fact, always organized in zebra patterns,' said Aleksandr Ukhorskiy, lead author of the paper at The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, or APL, in Laurel.
Gort, Mercia, 3 hours ago
if you consider and accept that all Space before the big bang is made up of anti matter with Zero point energy, therefore because there in no movement in this fermament it is logical to assume Time as a consept dont nor ever will exist in anti matter. what protects us from this anti matter is the speed we are moveing through it from the big bang,this could explain why light is a constant ,it could explain why elements have a resonance in spectroscopty ,it could even explain why black holes form ? that is matter that has slowed down enough to interact with the anti matter as in a star that has gone nova some of its material would explode in a backward direction once anti matter latches on to its reduced speed, a black hole forms . absolute Zero temprature can only exists in anti matter becase nothing moves. it could even be the reason why these bubbles in this article are forming around our planet Or do you think all this is a bit far fetched.
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