Giant Ribbon Discovered at Edge of Solar System

[mharratsc]

Jim- blessings on ya, brother, but... you have WAY too much traffic going on in your head!

I'm lucky if I can remember how to speak English when I wake up in the morning, and it's the only language I know. God bless coffee!

[tolenio]

Hello,

Since all plasma events are scalable I assume the same ribbon appears in Earth's magnetosphere's boundary?

Solar plasma which enters through Earth's magnetosphere cracks should behave in a similar fashion.

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2003 ... cracks.htm
Cracks in Earth's Magnetic Shield
Earth's magnetosphere generally does a good job of deflecting the particles ...
near a stream of solar ions pouring in through a crack in the magnetosphere. ...

Later,
Tom

[Osmosis]

I have never heard of or seen a crack in a magnetic field. I suspect there are cracks in cosmologists thinking.

[solrey]

Here is a better explanation than "cracks in the magnetic field".

CONDITIONS OF EXCITATION OF MAGNETOSPHERIC CONVECTION BY THE ELECTRIC CURRENT GENERATED IN THE BOW SHOCK.

Thus we have obtained the expression for the density of the electric field which is produced under the Bow Shock and is directed into the cavity formed by the BS. According to all indications, it is just the current that feeds electromagnetic energy to magnetospheric processes. Firstly, it depends on the By- and Bz-components of the IMF, and, secondly, it has a negative dawn-dusk component that depends only on Bz, and the north-southward component that depends only on By. It is such an association with IMF By that is revealed by geomagnetic variations [Uvarov et al., 1989].

In fact, inside the magnetosphere is a constant energy consumer, the Earth’s ionosphere. It is known that the energy flux density through the surface is proportional to the electric field component tangent to this surface.

Any change in external current through the magnetosphere causes a convection restructuring within a time on the order of the travel time of the magnetosonic wave from the magnetopause to the center of the system, because the restructuring wave comes from both flanks. In our model this implies the transition from the two-vortex to four-vortex convection system.

When it comes to interactions between two diverse plasma regions, it's all about the sheath. If they just accepted the existence of a double layer at the magnetopause they wouldn't have to make up stuff like magnetic reconnection or "cracks" in a magnetic field.

[tolenio]

Hello,

Again I ask, since all plasma events are scalable, is the same IBEX identified galacticparticle ribbon also found reflecting in the Earth's magnetosphere?

Thanks,
Tom

[mharratsc]

Would it be the equivalent of the Van Allen belts, perhaps?

[junglelord]

Would it be the equivalent of the Van Allen belts, perhaps?

Now there is a Scalar
http://www.daviddarling.info/images/Van_Allen_belts.jpg

[tolenio]

Hi,

What about the toroidal nature of the solar system's magnetic field?



Where are the satellites reporting from within the toroid?

I coould see that if charged particles are steered by the toroidal magnetic field, where you are in the field would change what you see on returning data.

This could mean they are just looking at denser particles from various slices of the toroid at different distances. Even my untrained eye could see how that ribbon could be perceived depending on satelite location.

Yes?

Tom

[allynh]

This could mean they are just looking at denser particles from various slices of the toroid at different distances. Even my untrained eye could see how that ribbon could be perceived depending on satelite location.

Yes?

Yes, interesting point. I see what you are saying now.

I've seen variations on the image you show. I wonder how that fits in this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Animati3.gif

Earth's magnetic field
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_magnetic_field

The Van Allen belts seem to be closer to the Earth than I realized.

Van Allen radiation belt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Allen_radiation_belt

[RayTomes]

These guys think that they have solved it:

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2010/15jan_ibex2.htm

"It is where solar wind particles heading out into interstellar space are reflected back into the solar system by a galactic magnetic field."

Their model gives a result very similar to what is observed.

[seasmith]

Particles from the solar wind that escape the solar system are met ~100 astronomical units (~15 billion kilometers) away by an interstellar magnetic field. ...

The solar system is passing through a region of the Milky Way filled with cosmic rays and interstellar clouds.

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2010/15jan_ibex2.htm




Scaling, scaling, would it be unreasonable to guess that a similar "skirt" projects through the plane of our Galaxy
and that the detected IMF and "clouds" are that portion of the galactic skirt that our Solar system is passing through?

~ Another, or con-current, possibility is that the top image is of vast Intergalactic electric filaments,
[which have been 'observed' to connect every 'star].

s

[tolenio]

Hello,

Is there a way to convert the above toroidal magnetic field into a a 3d vectored graphic you could fly through?

I would like to know what the vectored view looks like from various points inside the toroidal plane.

Even with the above graphic you can pull a ribbon in a swoosh out of the vectored view. If particles were concentrated alson magnetic field strength you might get the same ribbion depending on viewpoint.



Tom

[webolife]

The 3-D interactive graphic would be interesting to investigate.
The swoop however is really a circularish formation as those projections cover the entire sky.

[jjohnson]

The article notes,

The ribbon also has fine structure--small filaments of ENA emission no more than a few degrees wide: image. The fine structure is as much of a mystery as the ribbon itself, researchers say.

Here is the more finely detailed picture of the band: http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/3923 ... ature2.jpg

Remember what this ribbon is: it is a map of the strength (in keV if I read the scale legend correctly) of Energetic Neutral Atoms (ENAs) which are basically hydrogen atoms. So, do these energetic, filamentary apparent sources of particles represent particles striking the detectors on the IBEX spacecraft from something way farther out in interstellar space, or are they emitted or accelerated or created by a mechanism wandering about the helisheath, or are they the hypothesized particles being reflected back in by the alleged edge of the magnetic bubble, aka the heliosphere?

Frankly I haven't got a good idea why there are these particles streaming in and concentrated along that arc that looks as much like a baseball seam as anything else. Perhaps the interaction among the heliosheath and the inclined galactic magnetic field and the weakly ionized interstellar plasma "cloud" [hydrodynamics again!] are conspiring to create currents and fields which are accelerating the ENA's? That seems hard to do unless they are simply being "dragged along" by a much larger number of accelerated charged particles?

[allynh]

Is there a way to convert the above toroidal magnetic field into a a 3d vectored graphic you could fly through?

Look at the links I posted about Mathematica and see if anything looks close to what you need.

The Home Edition is reasonable in price. I checked with them about an individual making models and posting on a web site, and there is no license problem. If the Thunderbolts guys start using the models in their official stuff then they need to buy the Pro version for ten times more, but we should have no problem posting for others to see.