Understanding Electron Transport in Solar Wind

Tuesday, July 25, 2017

Understanding Electron Transport in Solar Wind

Understanding Electron Transport in Solar Wind:

Artist's depiction of solar wind particles interacting with Earth's magnetosphere. Credit: NASA

The sun constantly emits a flux of electrically charged particles into space, mostly protons and electrons, known as solar wind. This plasma affects the entire solar system, including Earth’s magnetic field and is therefore crucial to our understanding of space weather. Now, a University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) student is conducting a research into the transport of electrons and electron heat flux in the solar wind, which could provide new insights about this stream of energized particles emitted by the sun.

Bofeng Tang is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Space Science at UAH. He holds a master’s degree in physics and works under the supervision of National Academy of Sciences member Dr. Gary Zank, who serves as both chair of the department and director of UAH’s Center for Space Plasma and Aeronomic Research (CSPAR).

“I am hoping that Bofeng's research will clarify some aspects of the collisionless heat flux associated with the various solar wind electron populations, which will guide us then towards a better description of electron transport throughout the solar wind,” Zank told Astrowatch.net.

Tang has recently received a 2017/2018 NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship (NESSF). The fellowship includes a $30,000 award and can be renewed for a total of three years.

NASA’s Heliophysics Division, which helps further the space agency’s research objective of investigating the sun and its interactions with the solar system, chose Tang’s study as one of only nine NESSF applications. The fellowship secures funding for Tang’s research and lets him concentrate on in-depth study of the transport of electrons in solar wind.

“The NASA NESSF is important to students, both in terms of the prestige that it typically carries (there are few awarded annually so it is a reflection on the student's potential and also the proposed problem), and in terms of guaranteed support for up to three years. This guarantee of support allows a student to attack a good problem in some depth,” Zank noted.

Backed by NESSF, Tang will focus on solving the problem of how solar wind electrons are transported in the solar wind. This question perplexes researchers and it is still far from being solved, in part because the electrons are quite collisional in the solar corona and below but tend to be collisionless further out from the sun, experiencing scattering primarily due to waves and turbulence.

“Understanding what waves and turbulence is responsible for the scattering of the various electron components (core, strahl, halo, energetic electrons) is still rather unclear. At this point, we cannot even accurately write down the correct set of equations that adequately describes how electrons are transported from one part of the solar wind to another,” Zank said.

Currently, the scientists do not have a fundamentally sound description of electrons in the solar wind. Tang’s research is expected to establish a better framework for understanding the solar wind dynamics implicitly advancing our understanding of space weather.

According to Zank, Tang’s study could also help improve the reputation of CSPAR when it comes to research in the field of physics.

“My Department of Space Science and the Center for Space Plasma and Aeronomic Research at UAH regard our students research as vitally important to making progress in the physics of the space environment and in space weather. This research helps build our growing reputation and the value and importance of it relates both to the fundamental science we explore and also the increased reputation of our students,” Zank concluded.

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The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is the United States government agency responsible for the civilian space program as well as aeronautics and aerospace research. President Dwight D. Eisenhower established the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1958 with a distinctly civilian (rather than military) orientation encouraging peaceful applications in space science. The National Aeronautics and Space Act was passed on July 29, 1958, disestablishing NASA's predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). The new agency became operational on October 1, 1958.

UFO SIGHTINGS PHOTO PHOTOGRAPHY

The Oxford English Dictionary defines a UFO as "An unidentified flying object; a 'flying saucer'." The first published book to use the word was authored by Donald E. Keyhoe. The acronym "UFO" was coined by Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, who headed Project Blue Book, then the USAF's official investigation of UFOs. He wrote, "Obviously the term 'flying saucer' is misleading when applied to objects of every conceivable shape and performance. For this reason the military prefers the more general, if less colorful, name: unidentified flying objects. UFO (pronounced Yoo-foe) for short." Other phrases that were used officially and that predate the UFO acronym include "flying flapjack", "flying disc", "unexplained flying discs", "unidentifiable object", and "flying saucer". The phrase "flying saucer" had gained widespread attention after the summer of 1947. On June 24, a civilian pilot named Kenneth Arnold reported seeing nine objects flying in formation near Mount Rainier. Arnold timed the sighting and estimated the speed of discs to be over 1,200 mph (1,931 km/h). At the time, he described the objects' shape as being somewhat disc-like or saucer-like, leading to newspaper accounts of "flying saucers" and "flying discs". In popular usage the term UFO came to be used to refer to claims of alien spacecraft. and because of the public and media ridicule associated with the topic, some investigators prefer to use such terms as unidentified aerial phenomenon (or UAP) or anomalous phenomena, as in the title of the National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena (NARCAP).

UFO PHOTO PHOTOGRAPHY

UFO - Unidentified Flying Object An unidentified flying object, or UFO, in its most general definition, is any apparent anomaly in the sky that is not identifiable as a known object or phenomenon. Culturally, UFOs are associated with claims of visitation by extraterrestrial life or government-related conspiracy theories, and have become popular subjects in fiction. While UFOs are often later identified, sometimes identification may not be possible owing to the usually low quality of evidence related to UFO sightings (generally anecdotal evidence and eyewitness accounts). Stories of fantastical celestial apparitions have been told since antiquity, but the term "UFO" (or "UFOB") was officially created in 1953 by the United States Air Force (USAF) to serve as a catch-all for all such reports. In its initial definition, the USAF stated that a "UFOB" was "any airborne object which by performance, aerodynamic characteristics, or unusual features, does not conform to any presently known aircraft or missile type, or which cannot be positively identified as a familiar object." Accordingly, the term was initially restricted to that fraction of cases which remained unidentified after investigation, as the USAF was interested in potential national security reasons and/or "technical aspects" (see Air Force Regulation 200-2). During the late 1940s and through the 1950s, UFOs were often referred to popularly as "flying saucers" or "flying discs". The term UFO became more widespread during the 1950s, at first in technical literature, but later in popular use. UFOs garnered considerable interest during the Cold War, an era associated with a heightened concern for national security. Various studies have concluded that the phenomenon does not represent a threat to national security nor does it contain anything worthy of scientific pursuit (e.g., 1951 Flying Saucer Working Party, 1953 CIA Robertson Panel, USAF Project Blue Book, Condon Committee).

Photos of Nature | Nature Photography What is The Universe

Photos of Nature | Nature Photography What is The Universe

Tuesday, July 25, 2017