Shocking Recipe for Making Killer Electrons
Artist's impression of the Cluster constellation. ESA's mission Cluster consists of four identical spacecraft flying in formation between 19 000 and 119 000 km above the Earth. They study the interaction between the solar wind and Earth’s magnetosphere, or the Sun-Earth connection in 3D. (ESA)
Take a bunch of fast-moving electrons, place them in orbit and then hit them with the shock waves from a solar storm. What do you get? Killer electrons. That’s the shocking recipe revealed by ESA’s Cluster mission.
Killer electrons are highly energetic particles trapped in Earth’s outer radiation belt, which extends from 12 000 km to 64 000 km above the planet’s surface. During solar storms their number grows at least ten times and they can be dislodged, posing a threat to satellites. As the name suggests, killer electrons are energetic enough to penetrate satellite shielding and cause microscopic lightning strikes. If these electrical discharges take place in vital components, the satellite can be damaged or even rendered inoperable.
On 7 November 2004, the Sun blasted a solar storm in Earth’s direction. It was composed of an interplanetary shock wave followed by a large magnetic cloud. When the shock wave first swept over the ESA-NASA solar watchdog satellite SOHO, the speed of the solar wind (the constant flow of solar particles) suddenly increased from 500 km/s to 700 km/s. (more…)
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Nuclear Weapons: Predicting the Unthinkable
This picture was taken in 1970 when the French military tested a number of nuclear bombs on the French Polynesian islands of Mururoa and Fangataufa. (Courtesy Sean Buckley)
If a nuclear weapon were detonated in a metropolitan area, how large would the affected area be? Where should first responders first go? According to physicist Fernando Grinstein, we have some initial understanding to address these questions, but fundamental issues remain unresolved.
“The predictive capabilities of today’s state-of-the-art models in urban areas need to be improved, validated and tested,” says Grinstein. “Work in this area has been limited primarily because of lack of consistent funding.”
At the upcoming 62nd Annual Meeting of the American Physical Society’s (APS) Division of Fluid Dynamics in Minneapolis, Adam Wachtor — a student who worked with Grinstein at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico — will present his efforts to improve the way that models track the movement of radioactive fall-out carried by the wind. His wind models track the aftermath of a plume of hot gas released by a small, one-ton device in a typical urban setting at a three-meter resolution.
Current models use wind direction and wind speed to draw a predicted cone-shape area of fall-out. Wachtor’s results show that these models are too simple in some ways. For instance, they do not include the complex dynamics of wind movements around buildings, which can concentrate fall-out preferentially in certain areas. They also indicate that small changes in the location of the blast and the temperature of the plume released can have a large effect on the contamination patterns. (more…)
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