NASA Scientists Observe Strange Alphabet-Shaped Structures Glowing Above Earth’s Atmosphere

The closer you look at the universe, the more mysterious it seems. Recently, NASA’s Global Scale Limb and Disk Observations (GOLD) mission discovered strange C- and X-shaped structures hovering in the electrified layer of the ionosphere. “Who Knew Earth’s Upper Atmosphere Was Like Alphabet Soup?” NASA wrote about the registration on its website. The two papers detailing these C- and X-shaped formations were published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics in November 2023 and April 2024, respectively.

GOLD is NASA’s first science mission “to fly as a hosted payload on an otherwise unattached commercial satellite.” Its main purpose is to study the interface where Earth’s upper atmosphere meets the surrounding outer space. GOLD inspects the forces operating this layer to keep a check on terrestrial weather and satellite communications. While these alphabetic shapes were observed before, GOLD was able to capture them more clearly.

“The fact that we have very different bubble shapes so close together tells us that the dynamics of the atmosphere is more complex than we expected,” said Jeffrey Klenzing, a scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, of who studies the ionosphere.

The alphabet soup was observed in the atmospheric layer called the “ionosphere” which extends about 50 to 400 miles above the clouds but below outer space. The name ionosphere comes from the fact that the gases in these layers are excited by solar radiation to form ions, which have an electrical charge. It grows and shrinks depending on the energy it absorbs from the Sun. During the day, the layer is electrically charged by sunlight, knocking electrons off atoms and molecules. This creates a soup of charged particles called plasma, swirling in the ionosphere.

At night, when these particles are unable to feed off the Sun’s energy, pockets of low-density plasma called bubbles form. This particle paradise overlaps with Earth’s magnetosphere. Here, charged particles ball in the Earth’s magnetic field. Giving off a bright, colorful glow near Earth’s magnetic equator, charged particles are lifted up and out along magnetic field lines, creating two dense bands of particles north and south of the equator that scientists call ridges. These ridges and bubbles can interfere with radio signals and satellite communication.

While previous observations provided brief glimpses of ridges and bubbles in the ionosphere, GOLD monitored these features over long periods of time with its geostationary orbit, which circles the Earth at the same rate as it rotates. Previously, the instrument found that an X-shape formed after a massive solar storm from a volcanic eruption, but finding it without any such phenomenon is something of a surprise. “X is strange because it implies that there are many more localized driving factors,” Klenzing said. “This is expected during extreme events, but seeing it during ‘quiet time’ suggests that low atmospheric activity is significantly driving the ionospheric structure.”

The X-shaped plasma was accompanied by another unexpected alphabet bubble which was C-shaped. When GOLD discovered these strange C-shaped bubbles, scientists’ first thought was that these bubbles were formed by terrestrial winds. “It’s a bit like a tree growing in a windy area,” Klenzing explained. “If the winds are typically easterly, the tree starts to lean and grow in that direction.”

The first report on these C-shaped formations was published by a scientist at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP), Deepak Karan. Karan, with his colleagues, reported that these C-shaped bubbles were approximately 400 miles apart in the ionosphere. “Within that proximity, these two oppositely shaped plasma bubbles had not been thought of, nor had they been photographed,” Karan said, adding that some type of strong turbulence, such as a vortex, wind shear or tornado-like activity, has likely. at play in the atmosphere.

Scientists believe that the study of this alphabet soup is of great importance. “It’s really important to find out why this is happening,” Karan said. “If there has been a vortex or a very strong shear in the plasma, it will completely distort the plasma over that region. Signals will be completely lost with a strong disturbance like this.” Hopefully the driver of these alphabets will be revealed soon.