Researchers from the UCLA College of Letters and Science have successfully created an illustration which can possibly explain the formation of Earth’s third radiation ring.
Extremely energetic particles are said to make up this third ring, known as ultra-relativistic electrons, and these particles are driven by various physics than usually observed Van Allen radiation belt particles. The region the belts dwell in – about 1,000 to 50,000 kilometers above the Earth’s surface – is full of very vigorous electrons that move close to the speed of light.
Yuri Shprits, a research geophysicist with the UCLA Department of Earth and Space Sciences said in a press release, "In the past, scientists thought that all the electrons in the radiation belts around the Earth obeyed the same physics. We are finding now that radiation belts consist of different populations that are driven by very different physical processes."
The researchers also exposed the danger of Earth having a third radiation ring around it. The ultra-relativistic electrons from this ring are especially dangerous and can pierce through the shielding of the most sheltered and most precious space satellites.
Earth’s third radiation ring was first discovered in Sept. 1, 2012. Since then, the researchers have observed the behavior of the plasma waves produced by ions that do not usually affect energetic electrons drove ultra-relativistic electrons from the outer belt down to the inner edge of the outer belt. Only a thin ring of ultra-relativistic electrons lived up this storm and the remains formed the third ring.
A cold bubble of plasma circling the Earth expanded to shield the particles in the thin ring from the ion waves after the storm, thus, letting the ring to persist. They also discovered that electromagnetic pulsations with very low frequency, which were thought to be governing in losing and speeding up radiation belt electrons, did not manipulate the ultra-relativistic electrons.
According to Shprits, this study demonstrates that completely varied populations of particles survive in space, which changes on varied timeframes.
Their illustrations of the Earth’s radiation belts from late August 2012 to early October 2012 coincides with the observations from NASA's Van Allen Probes mission extraordinarily fine, proving the team's theory about the new ring.
The study was published in the Sept. 22 issue of the journal Nature Physics.
