Lightning Strike in Africa Helps Take Pulse of Sun Nov 15, 2009
"Even though Africa is thousands of miles from Israel, lightning signals there bounce off Earth's ionosphere -- the envelope surrounding Earth -- as they move from Africa to Israel," Prof ... He discovered a similar anomaly in the lightning data due to the changes in Earth's ionosphere -- signals waxed and waned on a 27-day cycle ... Price was able to show that this variability in the data was not due to changes in the lightning activity itself, but to changes in Earth's ionosphere, suspiciously... (Science Daily)
Vitaly Ginzburg; worked on Soviet hydrogen bomb Nov 10, 2009
During the war years, he worked on the transmission of radio waves through the ionosphere. Minor physical disabilities kept him from being conscripted into the army. (Boston Globe)
Put the cell phone down Nov 2, 2009
In fact, some of the telephones use frequencies high enough to burst through the ionosphere, shoot out into space and bounce off the moon. Maybe that s what happened to Uncle Leonard. (Burlington Union, MA)
FASTSAT instruments shipped to NASA Marshall for tests and launch preparation Oct 27, 2009
The instruments include the TTI, or Thermosphere Temperature Imager that will make measurements for things like spacecraft drag; the Mini-ME, a low energy neutral atom imager which will detect neutral atoms formed in the plasma population of the Earth's outer atmosphere to improve global space weather prediction; and PISA, the Plasma and Impedence Spectrum Analyzer which will test a new measurement technique for the thermal electron populations in the ionosphere, and their density structuring,... (EurekAlert! -- Business News)
Scientists create 'artificial ionosphere' using radio waves Oct 5, 2009
LONDON: An experiment that fires powerful radio waves into the sky has created a patch of 'artificial ionosphere', mimicking the uppermost portion of Earth's atmosphere ... It has spent nearly two decades using radio waves to probe Earth's magnetic field and ionosphere ... They determined that the areas of the bull's-eye with strange light patterns were in regions of denser, partially ionized gas in the atmosphere, as measured by ground-based high-frequency radar used to track the ionosphere. (India Times, India -- Health/Science)
NRL brings new hyperspectral atmospheric and ocean science to the International Space Station Sep 11, 2009
A complex series of maneuvers, involving both the ISS and the JEM-EF manipulator arms, will transfer HREP from the vehicle to its deployment station on the JEM-EF. HICO is the first space-borne sensor specifically designed for coastal maritime hyperspectral imaging, and RAIDS is a hyperspectral imaging sensor suite for innovative measurement of the Earth's thermosphere and ionosphere ... RAIDS, built collaboratively by NRL and The Aerospace Corporation, combines a suite of eight optical... (EurekAlert! -- Business News)
Mitsubishi Electric, IHI Will Join $21 Billion Space Solar-Power Project Sep 1, 2009
The trade ministry and the , which are leading the project, plan to launch a small satellite fitted with solar panels in 2015, and test beaming the electricity from space through the ionosphere, the outermost layer of the earths atmosphere, according to the trade ministry document. The government hopes to have the solar station fully operational in the 2030s, it said. (Bloomberg -- Japan)
Gigantic Lightning Jets Shoot from Clouds to Space Aug 25, 2009
The something that stops them is the ionosphere, the topmost layer of the Earth's atmosphere (right at the edge of space), which is made up of electrically charged atoms, or ions. The observations, detailed Sunday in the online issue of the journal Nature Geoscience, confirm that gigantic jets transfer charge from clouds to the highest layers of the Earth's atmosphere, just as their downwards cousins transfer it to the ground. (Fox News)
New 'crisis satellites' launched Jul 30, 2009
Page last updated at 19:51 GMT, Wednesday, 29 July 2009 20:51 UK. The satellites were launched atop a converted Soviet-era missile. (BBC News)
Still Stuck On The Cold War Jul 14, 2009
I wonder if the neocons have any clue at all what it would take to ensure that 100% of their enemy of the day's missiles not only got destroyed - but destroyed in such a way that nothing detonated within the planet's ionosphere AND all fragments and particles were sure to be beyond the reach of the planet's gravitational field. Gad. (CBS News)
Ham radio operators shoot for the moon Jun 27, 2009
Radio signals normally are reflected off various layers of Earth's ionosphere, which ranges from about 55 to 375 miles high ... It's a lot tougher for ham radio operators to bounce signals off the moon than off the ionosphere, said Teter, a ham operator whose "handle," or call sign is KG6LWE.. (San Francisco Chronicle -- Science)
White House Sounds Alarm On Climate Change Jun 17, 2009
Protect the ionosphere for sure. It wouldn'thurt to lower levels of auto and coal-burning assets, either. (CBS News)
Search For ET Just Got Easier: Effective Way To Search Atmospheres Of Planets For Signs Of Life Jun 16, 2009
It also contained unexpected molecular bands and the signature of the earth ionosphere. Enric Palle, lead author of the paper, from the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, said, "Now we know what the transmission spectrum of a inhabited planet looks like, we have a much better idea of how to find and recognize Earth like planets outside our solar system where life may be thriving. The information in this spectrum shows us that this is a very effective way to gather information about the... (Science Daily)
New Radar Improves Defense Of Earth's Technologies Against Threat Of Space Weather Jun 5, 2009
The new sounding mode enhances our temporal resolution of plasma irregularities within the ionosphere. The resolution increase may help our understanding of coupling processes between the solar wind and the Earth s magnetosphere by allowing the observation of smaller scale phenomena with an unprecedented resolution. (Science Daily)
STEP AWAY FROM YOUR COMPUTER! May 31, 2009
During the Reagan and Bush years, unprecedented federal defecits pushed the public debt of the United States into the ionosphere, with the total almost quadrupling over a little more than ten years to approach the fantastic total of $3. 25 thousand billion. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution -- Opinion)
Space storm's 'epicentre' found May 30, 2009
They saw magnetic oscillations hit the upper atmosphere in a particular location - somewhere over Canada - and ripple out across the ionosphere. These events were followed, three minutes later, by an auroral display. (BBC News -- Science)
Electricity Measured Inside Space Tornadoes Apr 28, 2009
The tornadoes then channel this current of flowing electric charge along twisted magnetic field lines into Earth's ionosphere to spark bright and colorful auroras. Andreas Keiling, a space physicist at the University of California, Berkeley's Space Sciences Laboratory, presented THEMIS's findings today at the general assembly of the European Geosciences Union in Vienna, Austria. (Fox News)
Scientists pinpoint the 'edge of space' Apr 10, 2009
"When you drag a heavy object over a surface, the interface becomes hot. In JOULE-II we were able to measure directly two regions being dragged past each other, one being the ionosphere -- being driven by flows in space -- and the other the earth's atmosphere," says Knudsen, who also is the head of the Space Physics Division of the Institute for Space Imaging Sciences (ISIS) ... The paper "Rocket-based measurements of ion velocity, neutral wind, and electric field in the collisional transition... (EurekAlert!)
Can radon gas leaks predict earthquakes? Apr 8, 2009
Some scientists are even looking at satellite measurements of small disturbances in the ionosphere found through minute changes in the properties of radio waves at very low and extremely low frequencies for potential warning signs. But these days, seismologists including those who continue to test the approaches Scholz and his colleagues first proposed are doing well to provide forecasts, rather than predictions. (Christian Science Monitor)
USTAR receives $33M stimulus Apr 6, 2009
- Space Weather: Examines how to forecast weather in Earth s upper atmosphere and ionosphere. These space weather disturbances can harm GPS and the power grid. (Logan Herald Journal, UT)
Collision puts new Asian satellites at risk Feb 24, 2009
Yellow caution lights are flashing for other satellites as well, including the Hubble Space Telescope and the Communication / Navigation Outage Forecasting System (C/NOFS) spacecraft which was launched last year to take measurements in the ionosphere - C/NOFS circles in an elliptical orbit ranging from 375 to 710 kilometers. There are also fears for the $500 million new GeoEye-1 satellite, which was launched in September and only commenced commercial operations in early February - it can focus... (Asia Times Online)
Old school still rules Feb 15, 2009
Russell Ruby of Corvallis used Morse code to call for help last September when he broke his leg backpacking in Washington s remote Glacier Peak Wilderness, bouncing a string of dots and dashes off the ionosphere to a ham in Bozeman, Mont. 600 miles away. (Albany Democrat-Herald, OR)
