Category: Plasma - Ascension Now

ALSO... STEVE'S SIDEKICK:

15/3/2021

Although STEVE is not an aurora, he has an aurora side-kick: the "picket fence." Evenly-spaced blobs of green light often appear alongside or underneath STEVE during geomagnetic storms. Alan Dyer photographed these specimens on March 13th:

"STEVE put on a great show, appearing first as the characteristic purple arc then developing green picket fence fingers rippling from east to west," says Dyer.
What are these green pickets? A team of researchers led by Toshi Nishimura of Boston University may have found the answer. Using data from NASA's THEMIS spacecraft, they pinpointed STEVE's power source. More than 22,000 km above Earth's surface, magnetic explosions called "substorms" hurl streams of hot plasma toward Earth. When the streams reach an altitude ~250 km above Earth's surface, they begin to emit a soft-purple light. This is STEVE.
The same explosions spray energetic electrons toward Earth. The electrons move even deeper into the atmosphere, all the way down to 100 km, where they ignite fingers of green auroras. This is the picket fence.
So when you see STEVE, look for his sidekick as well. Sometimes the picket fence appears first, so one can herald the other. Either way, it's a beautiful show.
www.spaceweather.com

BE ALERT FOR STEVE:

15/3/2021

Northern spring is less than a week away. That means hot ribbons of plasma are starting to flow in Earth's magnetosphere. Fred Hirschmann just saw one of them over Glacier View, Alaska:

"Just after midnight on March 12th I was feeding our outdoor woodstove when I recognized the long narrow band of STEVE overhead," says Hirschmann.
STEVE--short for "Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement"--was long thought to be a type of aurora borealis. But it's not. Auroras appear when particles rain down from space. STEVE, on the other hand, does not require "rain." Instead, satellite measurements show that it is a ribbon of hot (3000°C) gas speeding through the upper reaches of Earth's magnetic field faster than 10,000 mph. The ribbon's purple hue is still a mystery; some research suggests the color comes from heated nitrogen, but the jury's still out..
Studies show that STEVE appears most often in weeks around equinoxes--that is, now. If you live at high latitudes, be alert for purple ribbons in the sky.
www.spaceweather.com

INTERPLANETARY SHOCK WAVE:

21/4/2018

An interplanetary shock wave hit Earth's magnetic field on April 19th around 23:50 UT. When the disturbance arrived, the density of solar wind flowing around our planet abruptly quadrupled and a crack opened in Earth's magnetic field. The resulting G2-class geomagnetic storm sparked unusual "electric blue" auroras.

"I've been flying airplanes for 20 years and photographing aurora for 10 years, but I've never seen anything like this before" reports pilot Matt Melnyk, who photographed the display from 39,000 feet. "Electric blue auroras!" he says. "This was while on a red eye flight from Edmonton to Toronto around 4 am over northern Manitoba. Unbelievable sky. I was able to grab some hasty shots with a cell phone."

Auroras are usually green--a sign of oxygen. Rare blue auroras are caused by nitrogen molecules. Energetic particles striking N2+ at the upper limits of Earth's atmosphere can produce an azure glow during intense geomagnetic storms.

What is an interplanetary shock wave? It is a supersonic disturbance in the gaseous material of the solar wind. These waves are usually delivered by coronal mass ejections (CMEs). Indeed, this one might have been a minor CME that left the sun unrecognized earlier this week.

Alternately, it might have been an unusually sharp co-rotating interaction region (CIR). CIRs are transition zones between slow- and fast-moving streams of solar wind. They contain plasma density gradients and magnetic fields that often do a good job sparking auroras.
www.spaceweather.com

See also: 'Strong New Moon, Solar Activity and Gateways Ahead' by Sandra Walter, Wayshower, Ascension Guide and Gatekeeper

Russian scientists discover that treating cells with cold plasma leads to their regeneration and rejuvenation

16/9/2016

Phys.org : 14 Sep 2016

[extract] Russian scientists have found that treating cells with cold plasma leads to their regeneration and rejuvenation. This result can be used to develop a plasma therapy program for patients with non-healing wounds. The paper has been published in the Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics.

Non-healing wounds make it more difficult to provide effective treatment to patients and are therefore a serious problem faced by doctors. These wounds can be caused by damage to blood vessels in the case of diabetes, failure of the immune system resulting from an HIV infection or cancers, or slow cell division in elderly people. Treatment of non-healing wounds by conventional methods is very difficult, and in some cases impossible.

An earlier study established the bactericidal properties of low-temperature plasma, as well as the relatively high resistance of cells and tissues to its influence. The results of plasma treatment of patients with non-healing wounds varied from positive to neutral. The authors' previous work prompted them to investigate the possibility that the effect of plasma treatment on wound healing could depend on application pattern (the interval between applications and the total number of applications).

Two types of cells were used in this study: fibroblasts (connective tissue cells) and keratinocytes (epithelial cells). Both play a central role in wound healing.

"The positive response to plasma treatment that we observed could be linked to the activation of a natural destructive mechanism called autophagy, which removes damaged organelles from the cell and reactivates cellular metabolic processes," says Elena Petersen, a co-author of the paper and the head of the Laboratory of Cellular and Molecular Technologies at MIPT.

The scientists are planning additional research into the molecular mechanisms underlying the effects of plasma on cells. They also aim to determine the influence of a patient's age on the effectiveness of plasma therapy.

This article, with images, can be read in its entirety here.

Rare Auroras - 'Proton Arcs'

19/8/2015

A surprisingly strong G3-class geomagnetic storm erupted on Aug. 15th when a CME hit Earth's magnetic field. Two nights later, as the storm was subsiding, midnight sky watchers in North America witnessed a rare and beautiful form of aurora--a "proton arc." Paul Zizka photographed the phenomenon on Aug. 17th from Banff, Alberta (see below, left). "It was incredible," says Zizka. "The whitish pillar remained nearly stationary for over 30 minutes--enough time for a self-portrait."

In Val Marie, Saskatchewan, photographer Sherri Grant saw a purple proton arc cutting across the Milky Way. And in Oroville, Washington, at the Table Mountain Star Party, campers witnessed at least two more arcs (see below, centre and right).

Ordinary auroras are caused by electrons, which rain down on Earth's atmosphere from above. Atoms of oxygen and nitrogen, excited by the pitter-patter of electrons, form dynamic curtains of light. Protons have a different effect. For reasons not fully understood, protons normally trapped in our planet's ring current sometimes rain down on Earth's atmosphere during geomagnetic storms. En route, they excite a type of plasma wave called "EMIC"--short for electromagnetic ion cyclotron waves. The result is not a curtain, but rather a tight arc of light as shown above.

Many of the photographers who witnessed proton arcs on Aug. 17th have been observing auroras for years, yet they had never seen this phenomenon before. Geomagnetic storms still have the capacity to surprise!
www.spaceweather.com

X2-FLARE AND RADIO BLACKOUT : NASA MISSION

12/3/2015

All week long, sunspot AR2297 has been crackling with solar flares. Yesterday it produced a really big one. On March 11th at 16:22 UT (09:22 PDT), Earth orbiting-satellites detected an X2-class flare. The blast zone was larger than Earth tself:

Later today, March 12th, NASA will launch a fleet of spacecraft to investigate the mystery of magnetic reconnection: On the sun, magnetic field lines cross, cancel, reconnect and—bang! A solar flare explodes. How does the simple act of crisscrossing magnetic fields trigger such a ferocious blast? The Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission aims to find out. Get the full story from Science@NASA.
www.spaceweather.com

Researchers discover cold plasma has ability to kill norovirus

10/2/2015

Alex Berezow : BBC : 30 Jan 2015

Cold plasma consists of ionised gas molecules at room temperature_

Norovirus, the most common cause of gastroenteritis in the world, can be killed with "cold plasma," researchers in Germany have reported.

The virus, which elicits vomiting and diarrhoea, has gained international notoriety for causing outbreaks on cruise ships. However, such incidents represent merely a fraction of the tens of millions of cases that occur around the world each year.

The research appears in mBio journal.

Preventing norovirus outbreaks is complicated by the fact that the virus is highly resistant to several different chemical disinfectants. Bleach, a chlorine-based solution, is currently the most effective treatment, but researchers are seeking more convenient alternatives. One such alternative is cold plasma, also known as non-thermal plasma. This "fourth state of matter" consists of ionised gas molecules at room temperature. These ions can destroy many kinds of microbes, but their effect on viruses was less clear.

Handheld gadget

A team of scientists led by Dr Birte Ahlfeld and Prof Günter Klein at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Hannover examined the effect of cold plasma on a strain of norovirus isolated from a human faecal sample taken during an outbreak at a military base in Germany. Cold plasma treatment led to a roughly 20- to 50-fold reduction in the number of virus particles.

The viruses were destroyed because cold plasma consists of highly noxious ions, called reactive nitrogen and oxygen species, which exhibit potent antimicrobial activity. Moreover, the cold plasma generator, which produces the ions by applying an electric field to ambient air, could be designed as a handheld device. Alternatively, commonly contaminated surfaces, such as salad bars, could have cold plasma generators built into them.

Norovirus is infamous for causing gastroenteritis outbreaks on cruise ships. "A spread of norovirus can be inhibited at crucial points, which as we know from our previous studies are all surfaces with frequent contact to human skin or hands." Dr Klein said. "Handheld devices can be used to disinfect different surfaces or a plasma box for hands or cutlery or plates is possible."

Growing problem

Other researchers shared Dr Klein's enthusiasm. Brendan Niemira and Dr David Kingsley, food safety experts at the US Department of Agriculture who were not involved with the research, said: "Cold plasma is a waterless technology, so there wouldn't be any solutions to apply or to rinse off. That reduces water usage throughout the process, and might be more advantageous for continuous cleaning applications, such as for conveyor belts, materials handling surfaces, etc." A further advantage, they noted, is that storage of large volumes of sanitiser on site would no longer be necessary. Mr Niemira and Dr Kingsley believe that treating surfaces with a combination of bleach and cold plasma may eventually become the gold standard of norovirus decontamination.

Over the decades, norovirus research has been greatly hindered by the inability to grow the virus in the laboratory. However, in late 2014, scientists at the University of Florida reported a breakthrough after they successfully cultured the virus in a complex in vitro system that utilised B-cells.

Besides decontaminating surfaces, cold plasma may have other medical applications. For instance, its use in treating dental caries has recently completed phase II clinical trials in the United States.
Source

December 20th, 2014

20/12/2014

Big sunspot AR2242 erupted on Saturday, Dec. 20th @ 00:27 UT, producing an intense X1.8-class solar flare. This picture taken by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory shows a plume of material flying away from the blast site:

Radio emissions from shock waves rippling through the sun's atmosphere suggest that a CME is en route. However, we are still waiting for data from SOHO coronagraphs to confirm the existence and trajectory of a massive storm cloud. If a CME is coming, it will probably take 2 to 3 days to reach Earth.

There has already been one Earth-effect: extreme UV radiation from the flare ionized our planet's upper atmosphere and blacked out HF radio communications over Australia and the South Pacific. Below 10 MHz, transmissions were strongly attenuated for more than two hours. Stay tuned for updates.
www.spaceweather.com

Voyager Buffeted by Interstellar 'Tsunami Waves'

18/12/2014

Dec. 16, 2014: Since 2012, NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft has experienced three 'tsunami waves' in interstellar space. The most recent, which reached the spacecraft earlier this year, is still propagating outward according to new data. It is the longest-lasting shock wave that researchers have seen in interstellar space. "Most people would have thought the interstellar medium would have been smooth and quiet. But these shock waves seem to be more common than we thought," said Don Gurnett, professor of physics at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. Gurnett presented the new data Monday, Dec. 15 at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.

The Voyager 1 spacecraft has experienced three "tsunami waves" in interstellar space,
causing surrounding ionized matter to ring like a bell.

A "tsunami wave" occurs when the sun emits a coronal mass ejection, throwing out a magnetic cloud of plasma from its surface. This generates a wave of pressure. When the wave runs into the interstellar plasma -- the charged particles found in the space between the stars -- a shock wave results that perturbs the plasma. "The tsunami causes the ionized gas that is out there to resonate -- to "sing" or vibrate like a bell," said Ed Stone, project scientist for the Voyager mission based at California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

This is the third shock wave that Voyager 1 has experienced. The first event was in October to November of 2012, and the second wave in April to May of 2013 revealed an even higher plasma density. Voyager 1 detected the most recent event in February, and it is still going on as of November data. The spacecraft has moved outward 250 million miles (400 million kilometers) during the third event. "This remarkable event raises questions that will stimulate new studies of the nature of shocks in the interstellar medium," said Leonard Burlaga, astrophysicist emeritus at NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, who analyzed the magnetic field data that were key to these results. It is unclear to researchers what the unusual longevity of this particular wave may mean. They are also uncertain as to how fast the wave is moving or how broad a region it covers.

The second tsunami wave helped researchers determine in 2013 that Voyager 1 had left the heliosphere, the bubble created by the solar wind encompassing the sun and the planets in our solar system. Denser plasma "rings" at a higher frequency, and the medium that Voyager flew through was 40 times denser than what had been previously measured. This was key to the conclusion that Voyager had entered a frontier where no spacecraft had gone before: interstellar space. "The density of the plasma is higher the farther Voyager goes," Stone said. "Is that because the interstellar medium is denser as Voyager moves away from the heliosphere, or is it from the shock wave itself? We don't know yet."

Gurnett, principal investigator of the plasma wave instrument on Voyager, expects that such shock waves propagate far out into space, perhaps even to twice the distance between the sun and where the spacecraft is right now.

Voyager 1 and its twin, Voyager 2, were launched 16 days apart in 1977. Both spacecraft flew by Jupiter and Saturn. Voyager 2 also flew by Uranus and Neptune. Voyager 2, launched before Voyager 1, is the longest continuously operated spacecraft and is expected to enter interstellar space in a few years.

Credits and more information:Production editor: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA
JPL, a division of Caltech, built the twin Voyager spacecraft and operates them for the Heliophysics Division within NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
For more information on the Voyager mission, visit http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov

AURORAS LOVE EQUINOXES:

22/9/2014

The northern autumnal equinox is less than a day away - ie Tuesday 23 September. That's good news for sky watchers because, for reasons researchers do not fully understand, auroras love equinoxes. At this time of year even gentle gusts of solar wind can spark a nice display of Northern Lights:

Igor Matveev took the picture on Sept. 19th from Monchegorsk, Russia. There was no geomagnetic storm predicted that night--and no meteor shower. Yet Matveev saw both. "What luck!" he says. "I caught the entire meteor streaking beneath the auroras."

No CME was required to spark the auroras. Instead, a relatively minor fluctuation in the magnetism of the solar wind caused the display. Tomorrow's CIR (co-rotating interaction region) could be even more effective.

NOAA forecasters estimate a 30% chance of polar geomagnetic storms on Sept. 23-24 when a co-rotating interaction region (CIR) is expected to hit Earth's magnetic field. CIRs are transition zones between fast- and slow-moving solar wind streams. Solar wind plasma piles up in these regions, producing density gradients and shock waves that do a good job of sparking auroras. www.spaceweather.com

X-Flare and G3 Magnetic Storm - Review

16/9/2014

Suspicious0bservers
Published on 15 Sep 2014
www.Suspicious0bservers.org : www.ObservatoryProject.com : Aurora Video: https://vimeo.com/106051784

LINKS
Spaceweather: http://spaceweather.com
SDO: http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/
Helioviewer: http://www.helioviewer.org/
SOHO: http://sohodata.nascom.nasa.gov/cgi-b...
Stereo: http://stereo.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/i...
iSWA: http://iswa.gsfc.nasa.gov/iswa/iSWA.html
NASA ENLIL SPIRAL: http://iswa.gsfc.nasa.gov:8080/IswaSy...
NOAA ENLIL SPIRAL: http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/wsa-enlil/
GOES Xray: http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/sxi/goes15/i...
NOAA Sunspot Classifications: http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/ftpdir/lates...
GONG: http://gong2.nso.edu/dailyimages/
GONG Magnetic Maps: http://gong.nso.edu/data/magmap/ondem...

Northern Lights display

15/9/2014

Aurora Borealis 9-12-14 from Lights Over Lapland Plus
On September 11th and 12th two CMEs interacted with Earth's magnetosphere, causing a KP-7 Geomagnetic storm.
The storm sparked large aurora displays that will never be forgotten by the people that were lucky enough to witness the event. This short film is for everyone else....

facebook.com/lightsoverlapland

Aurora Borealis 9-12-14 from Lights Over Lapland on Vimeo.

X-FLARE:

10/9/2014

Earth-orbiting satellites have just detected a powerful X1.6-class solar flare (Sept. 10 @ 17:46 UT). The source was active sunspot AR2158, which is directly facing Earth. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded the extreme ultraviolet flash:

Ionizing radiation from the flare could cause HF radio blackouts and other communications disturbances, especially on the day-lit side of Earth. In the next few hours, when coronagraph data from SOHO and STEREO become available, we will see if a CME emerges from the blast site. If so, the cloud would likely be aimed directly at Earth and could reach our planet in 2 to 3 days. Stay tuned for updates about geomagnetic storms in the offing. www.spaceweather.com

NASA acknowledging Electric Universe?

26/6/2014

NASA acknowledging Electric Universe?: New NASA model gives glimpse into the invisible world of electric asteroids
phys.org
Wed, 25 Jun 2014 17:23 CDT

© NASA This is a concept image of an astronaut preparing to take samples from a captured asteroid. The sun is in the background; NASA wants to know more about electrical activity generated by the interaction of solar wind and radiation with asteroids.

Space may appear empty - a soundless vacuum, but it's not an absolute void. It flows with electric activity that is not visible to our eyes. NASA is developing plans to send humans to an asteroid, and wants to know more about the electrical environment explorers will encounter there.

A solar wind blown from the surface of the sun at about a million miles per hour flows around all solar system objects, forming swirling eddies and vortices in its wake. Magnetic fields carried by the solar wind warp, twist, and snap as they slam into the magnetic fields around other objects in our solar system, blasting particles to millions of miles per hour and sending electric currents surging in magnetic storms that, around Earth, can damage sensitive technology like satellites and power grids.

On airless objects like moons and asteroids, sunlight ejects negatively charged electrons from matter, giving sunlit areas a strong positive electric charge. The solar wind is an electrically conducting gas called plasma where matter has been torn apart into electrons, which are relatively light, and positively charged ions, which are thousands of times more massive. While areas in sunlight can charge positive, areas in shadow get a strong negative charge when electrons in the solar wind rush in ahead of heavier ions to fill voids created as the solar wind flows by. The surface of Earth is shielded from the direct effects of this activity by our planet's magnetic field, but airless objects without strong repelling magnetic fields, like small asteroids, have no protection from electrical activity in space.

NASA-sponsored researchers funded by the Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute (SSERVI) (formerly the NASA Lunar Science Institute (NLSI)) have developed a new computer model that can predict and visualize the interaction between the solar wind, solar radiation, and the surface of asteroids in unprecedented detail.

Read more at : http://www.sott.net/article/280953-NASA-acknowledging-Electric-Universe-New-NASA-model-gives-glimpse-into-the-invisible-world-of-electric-asteroids

Sun erupts with 3rd massive solar flare in 2 days

11/6/2014

The sun is hitting its stride. Earth's closest star shot off yet another powerful solar flare today (June 11) after producing a pair of major solar storms Tuesday. The X1-class flare reached its peak at 5:06 a.m. EDT (0906 GMT) and came from Region 2087 near the southeastern limb of the sun's disk, the same region of the star that produced the two powerful solar flares yesterday. NASA captured an amazing video of the X1 solar flare using its space-based Solar Dynamics Observatory.

Today's solar tempest did cause a brief radio blackout on Earth, but officials with the U.S. Space Weather Prediction Center based in Boulder, Colorado, don't think that the flare has an associated coronal mass ejection - a burst of hot plasma sent out from the sun during some solar flares. While officials with the SWPC didn't initially think that Tuesday's flares produced a coronal mass ejection - a burst of plasma associated with some solar flares - later analysis shows that the flares did produced two CMEs. The first solar flare produced a relatively small CME, with the second merging with it shortly after, according to astronomer Tony Phillips at spaceweather.com. The CME is expected to give Earth a glancing blow, when it reaches our part of the solar system Friday (June 13). It's possible that the incoming CME could create polar geomagnetic storms, according to Phillips.

The sun is in the active phase of its 11-year solar cycle, called Solar Cycle 24. NASA officials now think the sun is in its maximum, which they have dubbed the "mini max". Although the sun's activity is on the upswing, this solar max is still quite weak by comparison to other solar maximums on record, NASA officials have said. Scientists expected that the solar maximum (the peak in the sun's activity for the cycle) would occur in 2013.

© NASA/SDO
Three X-class flares erupted from the left side of the sun June 10-11, 2014. These images are from NASA's
Solar Dynamics Observatory and show light in a blend of two ultraviolet wavelengths: 171 and 131 angstroms.

"It's back," Dean Pesnell, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, said in a NASA statement Tuesday (June 10) on the sun's weather cycle. "Solar max has arrived."

Wednesday's solar flare is the eighth documented X-flare shot out from the sun in 2014. The most powerful flare of the year - a monster X4.9-class flare - occurred in February. X2 flares are two times as intense as X1 flares. If aimed toward Earth, X-flares can damage the planet's power grids and put satellites and astronauts in space in danger.

The sun also shoots out other, less powerful classes of solar flares. M-class flares can produce incredible auroras, and our nearest star also emits weaker C-class flares.

NASA has a fleet of sun-monitoring satellites in orbit today. The Solar Dynamics Observatory, the space agency's twin STEREO probes and the joint U.S.-European SOHO spacecraft all keep watch on the sun from space.

http://www.sott.net/article/280320-Sun-erupts-with-3rd-massive-solar-flare-in-2-days