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A new scientific study has proposed a new hypothesis
for a longstanding mystery in atmospheric science.
For many years scientists have wondered why the concentration of electrons
in Earth's atmosphere suddenly drops in a region dozens of miles above the Earth,
which some call the 'D-region ledge'.
According to a recent Space.com report, an investigative team
is now hypothesizing that tiny meteor dust particles higher in the atmosphere
might be responsible for "sucking up" the so-called missing electrons.
One of the study authors says of the electron deficiency,
"It's the most dramatic gradiant anywhere in the ionosphere.
It really is very conspicuous, so it's begging for an explanation".
To place this mystery into a larger context, we reached out to Dr. Michael Clarage,
one of the lead researchers of the SAFIRE Project.
The SAFIRE Project is an independent team of researchers building a unique
plasma discharge chamber to study a wide variety of electrical phenomena.
We asked Dr. Clarage for his thoughts on the electrical conditions
in Earth's environment, and a comment on his role on the SAFIRE Team.
[Dr. Michael] My job on the SAFIRE Team is to connect
astronomical phenomena to experiments we can do in the SAFIRE chamber.
Making the connection between something at a planetary scale
and something happening in the lab is always challenging.
And, we are by no means the first to be doing such experiments.
Since Birkeland's original work in the late 1800's there have been maybe twenty chambers,
I know about, built specifically to study the Earth's electrical environment.
To call out just two: In 1974, Dubinin, at the Institute of Space Research in Moscow,
put a magnetized sphere in a vacuum chamber, and shot high-energy electrons at it.
The spatial pattern of electrons precipitating onto the sphere
mimicked electron flows around the Earth, into our own magnetosphere.
That was really a breakthrough experiment.
In 2012, researchers at the Russian Academy of Sciences
also put a dipole magnetized sphere into a chamber,
and blew a wind of plasma past the sphere,
and were able to measure electrical potential differences
across the poles of this sphere that are similar
to electrical structures known to exist around the Earth
where we know that the part of the Earth experiencing sunrise
is at a higher electrical potential than the parts of the Earth experiencing sunset.
Now, that was a very impressive experiment
and really shows that laboratory experiments can be very relevant
to exploring what might be happening electrically around planets and stars.
The SAFIRE chamber is considerably more flexible
than these other two chambers I mentioned.
We are hoping to be able to explore a much wider range
of not only planetary phenomena, but also stellar phenomenon.
The mandate of the SAFIRE Team is quite broad:
to explore electrical phenomena at stellar and planetary scales,
but as to any particular theories about
the electrical nature of planets or stars, we are quite agnostic.
As Monty Childs has sometimes said, "we don't have a horse in the race".
We think that it's important because once a research group gets too locked in
to trying to prove a certain theory, or a specific scientific model,
then they usually end up ignoring data that does not fit their model.
We are going in there with as few preconceptions as possible.
We want the data to lead us to the model, not the other way around.
[Host, Michael] As one moves away from the ground on Earth,
the atmosphere gets more rarefied and more energized.
At around 50 kilometers above the ground,
the atmosphere begins to take on plasma properties
with electrons and ions coexisting in a highly conductive medium.
Some well-known fluctuations in electron density
including the so-called 'missing electrons' described as the 'D-region ledge'
are not easily explained using the standard models of the atmosphere.
We asked Dr. Clarage for his thoughts on the recent
Space.com article which describes this mystery.
[Dr. Michael] The first thing I think of when reading this article
is how far we still have to go
in terms of describing the large-scale electrical structures of planets.
It is still difficult for many astronomers and geophysicists to conceive
that an entire planet might have a charge
relative to other planets or the space around it.
Even though we know from direct measurement, on our own Earth
that the sky overhead has a persistent positive charge
relative to the ground we stand on, and that's around the entire Earth.
So, that is, the entire sky is charged relative to the entire surface of the Earth,
and that's called the 'fair-weather potential'.
I've been following research into this for years,
and most geophysicist are trying to describe this assuming the Earth
is in electrical isolation from the rest of the Solar System.
So, the explanations use only lightning, and winds, and heat
- that is, only events happening locally on Earth.
But, both the fair-weather potential, and what the Space.com article called
'The Case of the Missing Electrons', can also be seen as ordinary plasma structures.
I don't mean to minimize the complexity of the systems
- we are talking about very complex systems here -
I only mean to say, it's worth considering
that all planets are immersed in a larger electrical environment.
These charge separations of the fair-weather potential,
and the persistent electron density fluctuations in the ionosphere,
are examples of plasma structures that have been known
by laboratory plasmas physicists for decades.
And, these structures arise when one part of your system
is at a different electrical potential than its surroundings.
Let me take a minute here, and describe one aspect of charge separation in plasma.
I'm going to place a sphere in a vacuum chamber filled with plasma,
and I put a negative charge on that sphere.
In a plasma the charges can move, so the available positive charges is in the chamber
will be attracted to the negative sphere until overall, the charge is neutralized.
This is understandable, if I put a negative charge inside a plasma,
a bunch of positive charges will collect around it.
And, this is usually the only diagram you'll find in most plasma physics textbooks.
And, the thickness of that positive layer can be predicted -
it's called the Debye length of that plasma environment.
But, as plasma laboratory physicists have known for many decades,
and as we study in the SAFIRE chamber, the actual case is often more complex.
Now, here are a few pictures from the SAFIRE chamber showing not just one layer
of negative-positive, but multiple layers of negative-positive fluctuation.
These results were published in the Journal of Plasma Sources, Science and Technology.
These are beautiful dynamic phenomena
- I wish more people could be in the lab to watch these unfold.
Each of those layers contains a persistent separation of positive and negative charges.
The electron density ultimately increases and decreases as you move through the layers.
Now, the exact formation is quite dynamic and very sensitive to conditions
such as gas types, electrical potential, magnetic fields, etc.
The whole theory of electrical double layers is still in its infancy
- there's still much we do not know.
Practicing plasma physicists have known these layers to rise,
but, for historical reasons, astronomers have believed
that such charge separations cannot arise at the planetary or solar level.
If we look at the drawing presented in the Space.com article,
you see on the right that wavy red line heading up?
That represents increasing and decreasing electron density
as you move up, away from the Earth.
As the redline wiggles to the right that represents increasing electron density,
as the line wiggles left that's decreasing electron density
- this is the sort of oscillation in charge we see in the plasma double layers.
In other words, if you accept that the Earth
is at a different electrical potential than the Sun,
then this sort of up-and-down fluctuations in electron density is expected.
I'm not trying to oversimplify - the planet's ionosphere is a very complicated structure.
But, if you start with a simple electrical hypothesis
you can predict such features, whereas, if you start with the opposite hypothesis
that a planet cannot be a different electrical potential than its Sun,
then you have to construct much more complicated models
to explain what you see happening in the atmosphere.
To be continued ...
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