AGU/ESA: Earth's Magnetic Song Recorded

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bystander
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AGU/ESA: Earth's Magnetic Song Recorded

Post by bystander » Tue Nov 19, 2019 5:07 pm

Earth's Magnetic Song Recorded for First Time During Solar Storm
American Geophysical Union | European Space Agency | 2019 Nov 18

Data from ESA’s Cluster mission has provided a recording of the eerie ‘song’ that Earth sings when it is hit by a solar storm.

Click to play embedded YouTube video.
Eerie space chatter spewing from the Sun ~ Credit: ESA/Cluster Mission
The song comes from waves that are generated in the Earth’s magnetic field by the collision of the storm. The storm itself is the eruption of electrically charged particles from the Sun’s atmosphere...

As part of their orbits, the Cluster spacecraft repeatedly fly through the foreshock, which is the first region that particles encounter when a solar storm hits our planet. The team found that in the early part of the mission, from 2001 to 2005, the spacecraft flew through six such collisions, recording the waves that were generated.

The new analysis shows that, during the collision, the foreshock is driven to release magnetic waves that are much more complex than first thought...

When the frequencies of these magnetic waves are transformed into audible signals, they give rise to an uncanny song that is more reminiscent of the sound effects from a science fiction movie than from a natural phenomenon...

First Observations of the Disruption of the Earth's Foreshock Wave Field During Magnetic Clouds ~ L. Turc et al
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