NEW YORK: “We saw a striking pattern in the sky where stripes of high-density plasma neatly alternated with stripes of low-density plasma,” said team member Shyeh Tjing Loi from the University of Sydney and the ARC Centre of Excellence for All-sky Astrophysics, Australia.
“This pattern drifted slowly and aligned beautifully with the Earth’s magnetic field lines, like aurorae.”
The Earth’s magnetosphere is filled with plasma that is created by the atmosphere being ionized by sunlight.
The innermost layer of the magnetosphere is the ionosphere, and above that is the plasmasphere. They are embedded with a variety of strangely shaped plasma structures including, as has now been revealed, the tubes.
“For over 60 years, scientists believed these structures existed but by imaging them for the first time, we’ve provided visual evidence that they are really there,” Ms Loi said.
According to the scientists, the structures are strikingly organized, appearing as regularly spaced, alternating tubes of overdensities and underdensities strongly aligned with the Earth’s magnetic field.
