14 DAY TRIAL // The phenomenon takes place when electrons interacting with the Earth's magnetosphere go through a so-called magnetic explosion that occurs while the solar flares resulted from the Sun's activity and 'substorms' in the magnetosphere. The magnetosphere represents surrounding magnetic deflecting shield that protects the planet from the deadly radiation emitted by the Sun, and the region where the beautiful brilliant auroras take place.
As a result of the interactions between the magnetosphere and the solar flares, some electrons gather about 50 percent of the energy resulted from the flare energy. The events responsible for the acceleration of the electrons at so high energies, during the magnetic explosions remained so far mostly elusive in the local region of the universe which we populate.
However, recently a team of researchers from the University of New Hampshire, presented a material, in which they explain the mechanism responsible for the fast-moving electrons accelerated in the event of a magnetic explosion. The magnetic explosion site, also known as a reconnection layer, represents the region where magnetic lines annihilate themselves, and the energy resulted from the process is quickly converted and released. But physicist Li-Jen Chen, from the Space Science Center division of the UNH Institute, discovered that the most powerful emissions of electrons emerge from the adjacent reconnection layers, in structures named magnetic islands.
She started analyzing the problem of plasmas forming in Earth's magnetosphere in 2001, with the help of the four-spacecraft Cluster satellite mission, launched with the mission of probing various aspects of the magnetosphere, and found that during the magnetic reconnection process, a series of reconnection layers and islands in which energetic electrons had been found in high quantities.
An alternative theory regarding the magnetic mechanism responsible for the electron acceleration, takes into consideration the possibility of existing 'contracting magnetic island'. Though in theory the process has high hopes, further computer simulations and experiments are needed to test it.
Due to a lack of data, as the spacecrafts rarely encounter these magnetic explosions, there has been no previous correlation between the events related to the accelerating of the electrons and the magnetic islands. Even when these interactions occur, the insufficient time resolution prevents the scientists from gathering enough data to describe the magnetic island structures.
Chen provided the first experiment that shows clear correlation between the magnetic islands and the emissions of energetic electrons, during a reconnection process in the Earth's magnetosphere.