Plasma Tubes in the Ionosphere

[VK4TS]

http://www.news.com.au/technology/scien ... 379756018?

AN AUSTRALIAN scientist has discovered that giant, invisible, moving plasma tubes fill the skies above Earth.
It’s a finding that was initially met with a considerable degree of scepticism within the field of astrophysics, but a University of Sydney undergraduate student Cleo Loi, 23, has proven that the phenomenon exists.
By using a radio telescope in the West Australian outback to see space in 3D, Ms Loi has proven that the Earth’s atmosphere is embedded with these strangely shaped, tubular plasma structures. The complex, multilayered ducts are created by the atmosphere being ionised by sunlight.
“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,” said Ms Loi, of the Australia Research Council Centre of Excellence for All-sky Astrophysics (CAASTRO).
“We measured their position to be about 600km above the ground, in the upper ionosphere, and they appear to be continuing upwards into the plasmasphere.
“This is around where the neutral atmosphere ends, and we are transitioning to the plasma of outer space.
“We saw a striking pattern in the sky where stripes of high-density plasma neatly alternated with stripes of low-density plasma. This pattern drifted slowly and aligned beautifully with the Earth’s magnetic field lines, like aurorae.
“We realised we may be onto something big.”

[VK2ZRH]

A triumph for Ms Loi!

There's a more complete story here: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 092156.htm

At the foot of the story, there's a link to the Geophysical Research Letters paper (Lead author is Ms Loi, with 35 others ), which makes fascinating reading.

The acknowledgements in the paper include a tour-de-force of Australian scientific establishments and institutions (your VK tax dollars well-spent ?), along with those from the international science community.

No we know where whistlers ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistler_(radio) ) do their thing.

Acknowledgments
The data supporting this paper are
available upon request submitted via
email to the corresponding author at
sloi5113@uni.sydney.edu.au. This scientific
work makes use of the Murchison
Radio-astronomy Observatory,
operated by CSIRO. We acknowledge
the Wajarri Yamatji people as the
traditional owners of the Observatory
site. Support for the MWA comes from
the U.S. National Science Foundation
(grants AST-0457585, PHY-0835713,
CAREER-0847753, AST-0908884, and
AST-1412421), the Australian Research
Council (LIEF grants LE0775621
and LE0882938), the U.S. Air Force
Office of Scientific Research (grant
FA9550-0510247), and the Centre for
All-sky Astrophysics (an Australian
Research Council Centre of Excellence
funded by grant CE110001020). Support
is also provided by the Smithsonian
Astrophysical Observatory, the MIT
School of Science, the Raman Research
Institute, the Australian National
University, and the Victoria University
of Wellington (via grant MED-E1799
from the New Zealand Ministry of
Economic Development and an IBM
Shared University Research grant).
The Australian Federal government
provides additional support via
the Commonwealth Scientific and
Industrial Research Organisation
(CSIRO), National Collaborative
Research Infrastructure Strategy,
Education Investment Fund, and the
Australia India Strategic Research Fund,
and Astronomy Australia Limited,
under contract to Curtin University.
We acknowledge the iVEC Petabyte
Data Store, the Initiative in Innovative
Computing and the CUDA Center for
Excellence sponsored by NVIDIA at
Harvard University, and the
International Centre for Radio
Astronomy Research (ICRAR), a Joint
Venture of Curtin University and
The University of Western Australia,
funded by the Western Australian State
government. We thank D. B. Melrose
for discussions regarding physical
interpretations.

[VK7XX]

on the subject of plasma, just yesterday afternoon I was given a book called 'The Electric Universe' co-authored by an aussie, Wallace Thornhill and a 'merikan, David Talbott. It is all about plasma and electricity and so far, is very interesting.

73
John