Space - Astronomers capture image of mysterious interstellar comet

Astronomers capture image of mysterious interstellar comet

By Harry Pettit ,  The Sun , November 27, 2019

https://nypost.com/2019/11/27/astronomers-capture-image-of-mysterious-interstellar-comet/

Yale astronomers captured this new data image of Comet 2I/Borisov using W.M. Keck Observatory's Low Resolution Imaging Spectrometer. P. van Dokkum, G. Laughlin, C. Hsieh, S. Danieli/Yale University

A mysterious object hurtling toward our solar system from deep space has been photographed by scientists.

The incoming comet is like nothing scientists have seen before and is believed to have come from another star system.

That makes the visitor, known as 2I/Borisov, only the second interstellar object ever spotted in our solar system.

Discovered in August, Borisov has traveled at least 7 trillion miles to get here and will make its close approach to Earth next month.

Experts captured a closeup of the object Sunday using a telescope at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii.

The image, taken by Yale University scientists, showed the comet surrounded by a bright white glow.

Made up of ice and other debris crumbling from Borisov’s main body, the ghostly tail stretches a staggering 100,000 miles.

That makes it longer than 12 Earths stacked side by side behind the comet.

“It’s humbling to realize how small Earth is next to this visitor from another solar system,” said Yale scientist Dr. Pieter van Dokkum.

Borisov is only the second interstellar object spotted in our cosmic neighborhood. The first was ‘Oumuamua in 2017.

How the object will look passing by Earth,  P. van Dokkum, G. Laughlin, C. Hsieh, S. Danieli/Yale University

Traveling at around 110,000 mph, the interloper will pass roughly 190 million miles from Earth in December, according to NASA.

That’s about twice the average distance from Earth to the sun.

Borisov’s breakneck speed indicates it came from interstellar space and will likely return there again sometime next year.

Unlike ‘Oumuamua, which was only spotted as it sped past Earth, scientists saw Borisov coming weeks before its visit.

This has allowed them to study it extensively before it shoots off into interstellar space again.

“Comet Borisov will eventually leave our solar system,” University of California astronomer Dr. Paul Kalas wrote last month.

“Until then we should all enjoy the marvelous beauty of our alien comet friend.”

Despite numerous attempts to study Borisov, scientists remain clueless as to what it is. Many speculate the distant mass is a comet.

Experts say it’ll take a few more months to plot the object’s full trajectory, which may yield clues as to what it is and where it came from.

In studying it, scientists hope to shed light on how comets and other objects form in distant star systems.

The goal is to get a better understanding of how the universe ticks outside of our Milky Way.

According to prominent astronomer Dr. Seth Shostak, 76, we can’t say for sure Borisov is not an alien probe sent to study our planet.

“We can’t rule out that this is an interstellar probe,” Shostak, a senior astronomer at the SETI Institute in California, told the Sun in September.

“If we get a closeup look, we may well see it has a metal exterior with portholes and little green faces looking out at us.

“However, I would bet next month’s paycheck this is a comet.”

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Swimmers: Beware of Deep Brain Stimulation :)

Parkinson's Patients are Mysteriously Losing the Ability to Swim After Treatment

Despite good motor skills, deep brain stimulation may be causing Parkinson's patients to sink.

By Jennifer WalterNovember 27, 2019 1:00 PM

(Credit: Ermolaev Alexander/Shutterstock)

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For Parkinson’s patients, deep brain stimulation (DBS) can help control a number of neurological symptoms, like muscle spasms and stiffness. But one weird side effect has surfaced in a string of case studies: Some patients, no matter how good their motor skills, lose their ability to swim after the procedure.

Researchers from the University of Zürich in Switzerland published a report today in Neurology identifying nine cases where patients couldn’t stay afloat after DBS. And these people weren’t water-shy, first time doggie paddlers — two of the cases involved former competitive swimmers.

And, researchers report, the entire cohort had had no trouble swimming even after their Parkinson’s diagnosis. Rather, it seems that the invasive procedure — which involves implanting electrodes around the brain and heart to intercept erratic electrical signals — is what triggered the patients’ lack of buoyancy.

In Too Deep

Despite the puzzling pattern, researchers aren’t sure exactly why DBS could make patients sink. The report notes that the patients had seen an improvement in motor function after DBS — but after jumping into the water, their coordination vanished.

Christian Baumann, a neurologist at the University of Zürich, said the research team garnered interest in the topic after they learned one of their DBS patients had jumped into a lake and almost drowned.

"We clinicians usually do not ask questions about swimming and other sport activities, and therefore this effect might have been hidden from our attention," Baumann said in an email. After the patient's brush with death, the doctors began asking others with DBS devices about their swimming abilities.

Three of the nine patients, they learned, had turned off their deep brain devices and immediately were able to swim.

This isn't the first time researchers have observed this odd connection. In 2015, four similar case studies spanning two decades were reported by researchers in Australia. Three of those patients drowned after suddenly losing their swimming ability after DBS.

Baumann said disruptions in other, specific physical abilities, such as golfing or skiing, have also been observed in DBS patients. Like swimming, those skills are learned, are developed after birth, and involve a network of nerves working together to complete a task.

Murky Waters

With only anecdotal evidence so far, the odd condition leaves researchers with more questions than answers. Further study is needed to understand what’s happening in patients’ bodies.

Although the new paper represents just a few cases, Baumann said the main reason the doctors chose to write up a report was to increase awareness of this side effect. Though the underlying cause may be murky, trying to go for a swim after DBS could lead Parkinson's patients into dangerous waters.

Medical Science - How cannabis could be a first step in treating liver cancer

How cannabis could be a first step in treating liver cancer

"Eliminating cancerous cells while leaving healthy ones alone is an important step toward reducing patients’ suffering.”

By Maayan Jaffe-Hoffman, 
 the Jerusalem Post, November 27,  2019
https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/How-cannabis-helps-deliver-chemotherapy-directly-to-malignant-cancer-cell-609206

Hebrew University’s Prof. Alexander Binshtok in his lab
(photo credit: HADAS PARUSH/FLASH90)

Researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have developed a method to deliver chemotherapy drugs used to treat liver cancer directly to malignant cells, bypassing healthy ones. 

The method involves a combination of cannabidiol, one of the active cannabinoids identified within the cannabis plant, and a low dose of doxorubicin, a chemotherapeutic agent. “Most anticancer treatments are not sufficiently specific, meaning they attack healthy cells together with the malignant ones they’re trying to get rid of,” explained Prof. Alexander Binshtok, head of the Pain Plasticity Research Group at the Hebrew University’s Faculty of Medicine and Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences. “This leads to the many serious side effects associated with chemotherapy. 

Eliminating cancerous cells while leaving healthy ones alone is an important step toward reducing patients’ suffering.”

TRPV2 protein in action (Credit: Dr. David Roberson)

Binshtok explained to The Jerusalem Post that doxorubicin is “very effective against cancerous cells,” but it also affects heart cells and liver cells, even leading to heart failure when a patient is being treated for liver cancer. He said that liver cancer cells express a specific protein, TRPV2, which, when activated, creates a pore or channel in the otherwise impenetrable membrane. 

In contrast, healthy cancer cells do not have this protein. He said that CBD can be used to open this channel, through which a low dose of the drug can be inserted to kill the cancer cells. The drug will not enter the healthy cells that don’t have this protein. In the future, the precision of this delivery method may allow doctors to prescribe lower chemotherapy doses and to relieve patients of some of the harsher effects of chemo. 

The findings were published in a recent issue of Frontiers in Pharmacology. Binshtok said that because the team is using a chemotherapeutic agent already used in the clinic, as soon as his team is able to prove concept in the laboratory on animals, the passage to humans could be relatively short. “It’s too early to make concrete predictions, but we are hopeful,” he said. “I hope we do have a kind of light at the end of the tunnel.”

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Extraterrestrial impacts may have triggered 'bursts' of plate tectonics

NOVEMBER 26, 2019, by Geological Society of America

https://phys.org/news/2019-11-extraterrestrial-impacts-triggered-plate-tectonics.html

Spherules in the Barberton greenstone belt in the Kaapvaal craton, South Africa. Credit: Lowe et al., 2014.

When—and how—the Earth's surface evolved from a hot, primordial mush into a rocky planet continually resurfaced by plate tectonics remain some of the biggest unanswered questions in earth science research. Now a new study, published in Geology, suggests this earthly transition may in fact have been triggered by extra-terrestrial impacts.

"We tend to think of the Earth as an isolated system, where only internal processes matter," says Craig O'Neill , director of Macquarie University's Planetary Research Centre. "Increasingly, though, we're seeing the effect of solar system dynamics on how the Earth behaves."

Modelling simulations and comparisons with lunar impact studies have revealed that following Earth's accretion about 4.6 billion years ago, Earth-shattering impacts continued to shape the planet for hundreds of millions of years. Although these events appear to have tapered off over time, spherule beds—distinctive layers of round particles condensed from rock vaporized during an extra-terrestrial impact—found in South Africa and Australia suggest the Earth experienced a period of intense bombardment about 3.2 billion years ago, roughly the same time the first indications of plate tectonics appear in the rock record.

This coincidence caused O'Neill and co-authors Simone Marchi, William Bottke , and Roger Fu to wonder whether these circumstances could be related. "Modelling studies of the earliest Earth suggest that very large impacts—more than 300 km in diameter—could generate a significant thermal anomaly in the mantle," says O'Neill. This appears to have altered the mantle's buoyancy enough to create upwellings that, according to O'Neill, "could directly drive tectonics."

But the sparse evidence found to date from the Archaean—the period of time spanning 4.0 to 2.5 billion years ago—suggests that mostly smaller impacts less than 100 km in diameter occurred during this interval. To determine whether these more modest collisions were still large and frequent enough to initiate global tectonics, the researchers used existing techniques to expand the Middle Archaean impact record and then developed numerical simulations to model the thermal effects of these impacts on Earth's mantle.

The results indicate that during the Middle Archaean, 100-kilometer-wide impacts (about 30 km wider than the much younger Chixculub crater) were capable of weakening Earth's rigid, outermost layer. This, says O'Neill, could have acted as a trigger for tectonic processes, especially if Earth's exterior was already "primed" for subduction.

"If the lithosphere were the same thickness everywhere, such impacts would have little effect," states O'Neill. But during the Middle Archean, he says, the planet had cooled enough for the mantle to thicken in some spots and thin in others. The modeling showed that if an impact were to happen in an area where these differences existed, it would create a point of weakness in a system that already had a large contrast in buoyancy—and ultimately trigger modern tectonic processes.

"Our work shows there is a physical link between impact history and tectonic response at around the time when plate tectonics was suggested to have started," says O'Neill. "Processes that are fairly marginal today—such as impacting, or, to a lesser extent, volcanism, actively drove tectonic systems on the early Earth," he says. "By examining the implications of these processes, we can start exploring how the modern habitable Earth came to be."

Explore further Large meteorite impacts drove plate-tectonic processes on the early Earth

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Space - Jupiter’s Great Red Spot isn’t dying after all, scientist says

Jupiter’s Great Red Spot isn’t dying after all, scientist says

By Chris Ciaccia, Fox News, November 26, 2019

https://nypost.com/2019/11/26/jupiters-great-red-spot-isnt-dying-after-all-scientist-says/

Jupiters great red spot, NASA, ESA, A. Simon (Goddard Space)

Having been continuously observed since 1830, Jupiter’s Great Red Spot (GRS) has fascinated researchers. But despite recent reports that the clouds involved are shrinking, the storm continues to be exceptionally strong, according to a new study.

Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley spoke at a conference held by the American Physical Society’s Division of Fluid Dynamics and said there is no evidence the vortex that causes cloud formation has changed in size or strength.

“I don’t think its fortunes were ever bad,” University of California, Berkely professor Philip Marcus said in a statement.

“It’s more like Mark Twain’s comment: The reports about its death have been greatly exaggerated.”

A (false color) series of images capturing the repeated flaking of red clouds from the GRS in the Spring of 2019. In the earliest image, the flaking is predominant on the east side of the giant red vortex. The flake then breaks off from the GRS, but a new flake starts to detach in the fifth image. Chris Go

Earlier this year, amateur astronomers said they spotted “blades” and “flakes” spinning off from the Great Red Spot, causing speculation that the system itself was getting smaller.

Since astronomers are not actually able to see the storm itself and only the clouds, Marcus noted that the “flakes” could be due to storms interacting, rather than a weakening of the storm itself.

“The loss of undigested clouds from the GRS through encounters with stagnation points does not signify the demise of the GRS,” he added.

“The proximity of the stagnation points to the GRS during May and June does not signify its demise. The creation of little vortices to the east, northeast of the GRS during the spring of 2019 and their subsequent merging with the GRS does not signify its demise.”

In September, astronomers observed storms made of ammonia and water vapor that are disrupting the planet’s belts.

Jupiter continues to be a source of fascination for astronomers, with NASA’s Juno probe continuously orbiting the celestial giant since 2016. In August, a study suggested it may have had a massive collision with a “still-forming planet” approximately 4.5 billion years ago.

Two of Jupiter’s 79 known moons, Europa and Io, are also a source of intense interest for researchers. In August, NASA said it would explore Europa, an icy celestial body that could be habitable for humans and support life, as soon as 2023.

A massive volcano on Io, Loki Patera, a 125-mile-wide lava lake, is getting ready to erupt imminently, researchers said in September.

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Image: Giant magnetic ropes in a galaxy's halo

NOVEMBER 26, 2019, by National Radio Astronomy Observatory

https://phys.org/news/2019-11-image-giant-magnetic-ropes-galaxy.html

Composite image of the galaxy NGC 4631, the "Whale Galaxy," revealing large magnetic structures. Credit: Composite image by Jayanne English of the University of Manitoba, with NRAO VLA radio data from Silvia Carolina Mora-Partiarroyo and Marita Krause of the Max-Planck Institute for Radioastronomy. The observations are part of the project Continuum HAlos in Nearby Galaxies -- an EVLA Survey (CHANG-ES). The optical data were from the Mayall 4-meter telescope, collected by Maria Patterson and Rene Walterbos of New Mexico State University. Arpad Miskolczi of the University of Bochum provided the software code for tracing the magnetic field lines.

This image of the "Whale Galaxy" (NGC 4631), made with the National Science Foundation's Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA), reveals hair-like filaments of the galaxy's magnetic field protruding above and below the galaxy's disk.

The spiral galaxy is seen edge-on, with its disk of stars shown in pink. The filaments, shown in green and blue, extend beyond the disk into the galaxy's extended halo. Green indicates filaments with their magnetic field pointing roughly toward us and blue with the field pointing away. This phenomenon, with the field alternating in direction, has never before been seen in the halo of a galaxy.

"This is the first time that we have clearly detected what astronomers call large-scale, coherent, magnetic fields far in the halo of a spiral galaxy, with the field lines aligned in the same direction over distances of a thousand light-years. We even see a regular pattern of this organized field changing direction," said Marita Krause, of the Max-Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany.

An international team of astronomers who are part of a project called the Continuum HAlos in Nearby Galaxies—an EVLA Survey (CHANG-ES), led by Judith Irwin of Queen's University in Ontario, said the image indicates a large-scale, coherent magnetic field that is generated by dynamo action within the galaxy and spirals far outward in the form of giant magnetic ropes perpendicular to the disk.

"We are a little bit like the blind men and the elephant, since each time we look at the galaxy in a different way we reach a different conclusion about its nature! However, we seem to have one of those rare occasions where a classical theory, about magnetic generators called dynamos, predicted the observations of NGC 4631 quite well. Our dynamo model produces spiraling magnetic fields in the halo that are a continuation of the normal spiral arms in the galaxy's disc," said Richard Henriksen, of Queen's University.

The scientists are continuing their work to further refine their understanding of the galaxy's full magnetic structure.

The image was made by combining data from multiple observations with the VLA's giant dish antennas arranged in different configurations to show both large structures and finer details within the galaxy. The naturally-emitted radio waves from the galaxy were analyzed to reveal the magnetic fields, including their directions.

The scientists said the techniques used to determine the direction of the magnetic field lines, illustrated by this image, now can be used on this and other galaxies to answer important questions about whether coherent magnetic fields are common in galactic halos and what their shapes are.

Building such a picture, they said, can answer important questions such as how galaxies acquire magnetic fields, and whether all such fields are produced by a dynamo effect. Can these galaxy halo fields illuminate the mysterious origin of the even larger intergalactic magnetic fields that have been observed?

NGC 4631, 25 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Canes Venatici, is about 80,000 light-years across, slightly smaller than our own Milky Way. It was discovered by the famous British astronomer Sir William Herschel in 1787. This image also shows a companion, NGC 4627, a small elliptical galaxy, just above NGC 4631.

The results were reported in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

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SPACE - S0 - 20191127 - Space Weather, Records Fall, Galactic Magnetic Fields

SPACE - S0 - 20191127 - Space Weather, Records Fall, Galactic Magnetic Fields

Good Morning, Observers!

  
Some very pretty prominences on the South-East lim. Solar wind speed is around 390 KPS, so that coronal hole stream doesn't appear to have arrived yet. Particle density went up slightly overnight, which is usually a precursor to a wind speed bump. KP Indexes were low with KP-0s yesterday morning, and a steady set of KP-1s since then. The coronal hole which passed has pretty much broken up, but there are two more approaching in the lower Southern latitudes. A sprinkling of bright spots on the solar surface, with a particularly intense glow coming in from the Eastern lim just North of the equator. A deep Mag 6.0 hit Crete (65 KM), no reports of damage yet.
  

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Space - Astronomers capture first-ever merger of three giant black holes

Astronomers capture first-ever merger of three giant black holes

By Harry Pettit,  The Sun, November 26, 2019

https://nypost.com/2019/11/26/astronomers-capture-first-ever-merger-of-three-giant-black-holes/

Three black holes (inset image; yellow) are merging within a galaxy called NGC 6240. P. Weilbacher

A trio of monster black holes have been spotted crashing into each other.

The galactic fracas is taking place 300 million light-years from Earth and will lead to the birth of a single, mega black hole.

Scientists in Germany discovered the rare event within NGC 6240, a well-studied nearby galaxy.

The black holes are close to each other at the core of the system and shed light on how massive galaxies are born.

“Up until now, such a concentration of three supermassive black holes had never been discovered in the universe,” said Dr. Peter Weilbacher, of the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam.

“The present case provides evidence of a simultaneous merging process of three galaxies along with their central black holes.”

Astronomers used the Very Large Telescope in Chile to make their discovery.

The NGC 6240 galaxy is relatively close to our own Milky Way in space terms and has an odd shape.

Galaxies are often made up of hundreds of billions of stars locked in an orbital dance with a supermassive black hole at the core.

It had long been assumed NGC 6240 formed when two smaller galaxies collided, leaving it with a pair of black holes – hence the odd shape.

However, the new observations revealed the galaxy, in fact, had three black holes crammed into its violent core.

“Through our observations with extremely high spatial resolution we were able to show that NGC 6240 hosts not two but three supermassive black holes in its center,” said Professor Wolfram Kollatschny, an astronomer at the University of Göttingen.

“Each of the three heavyweights has a mass of more than 90 million suns.

“They are located in a region of space less than 3,000 light-years across, i.e. in less than one-hundredth of the total size of the galaxy.”

According to the team, the discovery opens new doors for our understanding of the universe.

Up until now, scientists had not been able to explain how the biggest galaxies in the universe evolved through the space processes we know and understand.

This puzzle could be solved if it’s proved that three or more supermassive black holes can merge into a single entity.

“If simultaneous merging processes of several galaxies took place, then the largest galaxies with their central supermassive black holes were able to evolve much faster,” Dr Weilbacher added.

“Our observations provide the first indication of this scenario.”

The study was published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

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Defense - Russia says it showed hypersonic nuclear missile system to US inspectors

Russia says it showed hypersonic nuclear missile system to US inspectors

By Reuters, November 26, 2019

https://nypost.com/2019/11/26/russia-says-it-showed-hypersonic-nuclear-missile-system-to-us-inspectors/

In this video grab provided by RU-RTR Russian television, a computer simulation shows the Avangard hypersonic vehicle maneuvering to bypass missile defenses en route to target. AP 

MOSCOW — Russia’s Ministry of Defense said Tuesday it had shown the country’s new Avangard nuclear missile system to US inspectors for the first time, a move Moscow said showed a key arms control treaty was still effective.

Russia is due to deploy next month the Avangard system, a hypersonic glide vehicle designed to sit atop an intercontinental ballistic missile, one of several new types of weapons touted by President Vladimir Putin as ahead of their time.

The Defense Ministry said a group of visiting US arms inspectors had been shown the Avangard system from Nov. 24 to 26 under the auspices of the New START treaty, which went into effect in 2011.

The treaty limits the number of strategic nuclear warheads the world’s two biggest nuclear powers can deploy to no more than 1,550 each.

The Avangard hypersonic vehicle maneuvering to bypass missile defenses en route to target. AP

The treaty, which is due to expire in 2021, also curbs the number of nuclear launchers and deployed land- and submarine-based missiles and nuclear-capable bombers they can have.

Putin has said Moscow is ready to extend the pact, but has complained about what he sees as Washington’s lack of interest.

President Donald Trump, who told Putin in 2017 he thought it was a bad deal for the United States, will only decide next year whether to extend the treaty, US officials have said.

It was signed by Trump’s predecessor, President Barack Obama, with Russia in 2010.

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Science - Scientists think they may have discovered a fifth force of nature

Scientists think they may have discovered a fifth force of nature

By Christy Cooney ,  The Sun,  November 25, 2019

https://nypost.com/2019/11/25/scientists-think-they-may-have-discovered-a-fifth-force-of-nature/

Shutterstock image 

Scientists say they may have found a fifth force of nature and moved a step closer to understanding the workings of the universe.

Researchers at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences say they have detected a new particle behaving in ways that cannot be explained using current models.

The team achieved the results by watching the way in which an excited helium atom emitted light as it decayed.

An atom is said to be “excited” if any of its electrons are not orbiting in their lowest-possible energy level.

When an electron returns to its lowest orbital, or “decays”, some of its energy is released in the form of smaller particles or photons of light.

Scientists can measure the angles at which those particles or photons are emitted and use the data to study the forces governing the process.

The Hungarian researchers observed a particle being emitted at an angle – 115 degrees – not explained by the so-called Standard Model of particle physics.

They believe they have discovered a new particle, dubbed X17 because it has a mass of 17 megaelectronvolts and say it could be indicative of a fifth force at work in the universe.

There are four fundamental forces – gravity, electromagnetism, the weak nuclear force and the strong force – currently known to exist.

“No-brainer Nobel prize”
The study’s lead scientist, Attila Krasznahorkay, told CNN: “X17 could be a particle, which connects our visible world with the dark matter.”

Dark matter is a form of matter thought to account for about 85 percent of all the matter in the universe but whose existence has only been inferred from scientific observations.

Krasznahorkay’s team’s result comes three years after they published a similar finding from an experiment conducted with another type of atom named beryllium-8.

Fellow scientists assumed the results must be a mistake, but have been unable to find any mistakes in the team’s work or in the way the experiment was conducted.

Geraint Lewis, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Sydney told ABC News: “What it’s telling us if it is correct is that there is something going on in the way that one particle talks to another particle that we haven’t got inside our mathematics at the moment.”

Jonathan Feng, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of California, Irvine, told CNN that, if the observations are correct, the chances they are the result of something other than particle X17 and a fifth force, are one in a trillion.

He added that if any group could repeat the results with a third atom, it “would blow the cover off this thing”.

“This would be a no-brainer Nobel Prize,” he said.

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NASA rockets study why tech goes haywire near poles

NOVEMBER 25, 2019, by Miles Hatfield, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

https://phys.org/news/2019-11-nasa-rockets-tech-haywire-poles.html

Animated illustration showing the the solar wind streaming around Earth's magnetosphere. Near the North and South Poles, Earth's magnetic field forms funnels that allow the solar wind access to the upper atmosphere. Credit: NASA/CILab/Josh Masters

Each second, 1.5 million tons of solar material shoot off of the Sun and out into space, traveling at hundreds of miles per second. Known as the solar wind, this incessant stream of plasma, or electrified gas, has pelted Earth for more than 4 billion years. Thanks to our planet's magnetic field, it's mostly deflected away. But head far enough north, and you'll find the exception.

"Most of Earth is shielded from the solar wind," said Mark Conde, space physicist as the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. "But right near the poles, in the midday sector, our magnetic field becomes a funnel where the solar wind can get all the way down to the atmosphere."

These funnels, known as the polar cusps, can cause some trouble. The influx of solar wind disturbs the atmosphere, disrupting satellites and radio and GPS signals. Beginning Nov. 25, 2019, three new NASA-supported missions will launch into the northern polar cusp, aiming to improve the technology affected by it.

Shaky Satellites

The three missions are all part of the Grand Challenge Initiative – Cusp, a series of nine sounding rocket missions exploring the polar cusp. Sounding rockets are a type of space vehicle that makes 15-minute flights into space before falling back to Earth. Standing up to 65 feet tall and flying anywhere from 20 to 800 miles high, sounding rockets can be aimed and fired at moving targets with only a few minutes notice. This flexibility and precision make them ideal for capturing the strange phenomena inside the cusp.

Two of the three upcoming missions will study the same anomaly: a patch of atmosphere inside the cusp notably denser than its surroundings. It was discovered in 2004, when scientists noticed that part of the atmosphere inside the cusp was about 1.5 times heavier than expected.

Video from CREX's last flight, showing vapor tracers following high-altitude polar winds. Both CREX-2 and CHI missions will use a similar methodology to track winds thought to support the density enhancement inside the cusp. Credit: NASA/CREX/Mark Conde

"A little extra mass 200 miles up might seem like no big deal," said Conde, the principal investigator for the Cusp Region Experiment-2, or CREX-2, mission. "But the pressure change associated with this increased mass density, if it occurred at ground level, would cause a continuous hurricane stronger than anything seen in meteorological records."

This additional mass creates problems for spacecraft flying through it, like the many satellites that follow a polar orbit. Passing through the dense patch can shake up their trajectories, making close encounters with other spacecraft or orbital debris riskier than they would otherwise be.

"A small change of a few hundred meters can make the difference between having to do an evasive maneuver, or not," Conde said.

Both CREX-2 and Cusp Heating Investigation, or CHI mission, led by Miguel Larsen of Clemson University in South Carolina, will study this heavy patch of atmosphere to better predict its effects on satellites passing through. "Each mission has its own strengths, but ideally, they'll be launched together," Larsen said.

Corrupted Communication
It's not just spacecraft that behave unpredictably near the cusp – so do the GPS and communications signals they transmit. The culprit, in many cases, is atmospheric turbulence

Illustration of the ICI-5 rocket deploying its 12 daughter payloads. Once in space, these additional sensors will help scientists distinguish turbulence from waves, both of which could be the cause of corrupted communication signals. Credit: Andøya Space Center/Trond Abrahamsen

"Turbulence is one of the really hard remaining questions in classical physics," said Jøran Moen, space physicist at the University of Oslo. "We don't really know what it is because we have no direct measurements yet."

Moen, who is leading the Investigation of Cusp Irregularities-5 or ICI-5 mission, likens turbulence to the swirling eddies that form when rivers rush around rocks. When the atmosphere grows turbulent, GPS and communication signals passing through it can become garbled, sending unreliable signals to the planes and ships that depend on them.

Moen hopes to make the first measurements to distinguish true turbulence from electric waves that can also disrupt communication signals. Though both processes have similar effects on GPS, figuring out which phenomenon drives these disturbances is critical to predicting them.

"The motivation is to increase the integrity of the GPS signals," Moen said. "But we need to know the driver to forecast when and where these disturbances will occur."

Waiting on Weather
The extreme North provides a pristine locale for examining physics much harder to study elsewhere. The tiny arctic town on Svalbard, the Norwegian archipelago from which the ICI-5 and CHI rockets will launch, has a small population and strict restrictions on the use of radio or Wi-Fi, creating an ideal laboratory environment for science.

Earth’s magnetosphere, showing the northern and southern polar cusps. Credit: Andøya Space Center/Trond Abrahamsen

"Turbulence occurs in many places, but it's better to go to this laboratory that is not contaminated by other processes," Moen said. "The 'cusp laboratory'—that's Svalbard."

Ideally, the CHI rocket would launch from Svalbard at nearly the same time that CREX-2 launches from Andenes, Norway. The ICI-5 rocket, on a second launcher in Svalbard, would fly soon after. But the timing can be tricky: Andenes is 650 miles south of Svalbard, and can experience different weather. "It's not a requirement, but launching together would certainly multiply the scientific returns of the missions," Conde said.

Keeping a constant eye on the weather, waiting for the right moment to launch, is a key part of launching rockets — even part of the draw.

"It really is an all-consuming thing," Conde said. "All you do when you're out there is watch conditions and talk about the rocket and decide what you would do."

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