Radio Cadena Agramonte emisiora de Camagüey
Mysterious chirping signals have been detected by an international team of astronomers in a place in space where they have never been identified before, raising serious questions about their origin, AP reported this week.
These are called chorus waves, some of the strongest electromagnetic emissions in space, which is why their radiation can be dangerous to humans and satellites. They are so named because, when converted into audio signals, they sound like birdsong.
Although their existence has been known for decades, scientists still do not fully understand how they are produced. It has been theorized that the Earth's magnetic field could contribute to their formation.
Previously, these signals had been measured 51,000 kilometers from Earth, at a point where the Earth's magnetic field behaves in a dipolar manner, that is, like a magnet with opposite and different poles.
However, a new study published in the journal Nature details the discovery of chorus waves about 165,000 kilometers from our planet, where magnetic dipole effects are absent, something researchers did not expect.
This new finding contrasts with the conventional assumption that chorus waves are influenced by planetary magnetic dipole fields. However, a previously hypothesized phenomenon known as electron cyclotron resonance was observed for the first time, providing greater energy from plasma particles to chorus waves.
These results were obtained after analyzing high-resolution images obtained by NASA's MMS satellites, which were launched in 2015 to explore the magnetic fields of the Earth and Sun. (Text and photo: RT)
