The atmosphere is swelling

in Popular STEM10 months ago

The atmosphere is swelling



Image created by me in playgroundai


The thermosphere is warming up and this time it is not the fault of humans, it also has nothing to do with climate change or global warming, the thermosphere is a layer of the earth's atmosphere, it begins approximately between 80 to 120 kilometers high from the earth and extends up to 500 or 1000 km from the earth's surface.


It is a part of the Earth's atmosphere but, there the gas molecules are very dispersed, there are very few, at that distance, in that area is the low Earth orbit where the vast majority of space satellites are, including both Chinese space stations like the international space station.


Satellites and ships have no problems navigating in that area, at that distance because, as I already said, the number of atmospheric gas molecules that exist are very few, so there is no friction or friction with them is minimal, within that layer. we have a lot of ultraviolet radiation and especially a lot of Gamma rays and x-rays from the Sun and cosmic rays, all of this causes the ionization of the atoms of the molecules that are there, in this process the gases that compose it raise their temperature to several hundred degrees, hence its name, is an area where, in principle, those loose molecules are quite hot.



Souce


There is a problem that is worrying the experts and that is that this year the Sun is being especially active, there is a series of geomagnetic storms in 2023 that have bombarded the Earth's upper atmosphere with terawatts of energy and this has helped to raise its temperature What is worse, it has also helped to raise the height of atmospheric gases, to a level that has not been known for 20 years.


Simply put, solar storms fill the upper part of the Earth's atmosphere with energy, the gases that form it swell, heat up like any other normal phenomenon and when these gases swell they reach higher altitudes, with which space satellites end up colliding or rubbing against a greater number of molecules in the atmosphere and that friction can end up knocking them down, that is what happened to 40 satellites of the Starlink company that of Elon musk in February of last year, a solar storm in the chola atmosphere and the satellites began to brush with the air, lost speed and ended up falling to the ground.


It was not a strong storm, there were 40 but if the current situation continues to progress we could see a veritable rain of hundreds of satellites knocked down by an atmosphere that has swelled and has risen up to the height where these satellites are, causing them to rub more amount of molecules in the atmosphere and therefore slowing down their speed and causing them to fall, this would alter our communications, GPS and a multitude of technological services on which we currently depend.



Souce


The growing constellation of starlinK satellites alone currently has about 4,100 satellites and an extreme geomagnetic storm like the Halloween storms of 2003 could force satellites to be moved tens of kilometers up to save them, although the ones below are going to end up falling


The experts are seeing some of the highest readings in almost 22 years they have put out this chart the solar cycle 24 you see on the chart is the previous one we are currently on solar cycle 25 and have not peaked yet the cycles last 11 years and the maximum of this cycle 25 will occur around July 2025, however, despite this we have already surpassed cycle 24 and even though the experts thought that cycle 25 would be moderate, it would be similar to 24, well no, it is being very unruly, very intense with very powerful storms and making the atmosphere puff up.





Source




Thank you for visiting my blog. If you like posts about #science, #planet, #politics, #rights #crypto, #traveling and discovering secrets and beauties of the #universe, feel free to Follow me as these are the topics I write about the most. Have a wonderful day and stay on this great platform :) :)


! The truth will set us free and science is the one that is closest to the truth!


Coin Marketplace

STEEM 0.35
TRX 0.12
JST 0.040
BTC 70597.89
ETH 3559.60
USDT 1.00
SBD 4.77