July 2016
Plasma Crystals - from space research to medicine on Earth and back to space again
... medium (very tenuous hot plasma), etc. On Earth we have atmospheric lightning (short duration plasma channels), the ionosphere (ionised by radiation from the Sun), discharges in sandstorms and in volcanic plumes, etc. Man-made plasmas can...
August 2019
Lessons from the Sun
... communications. Within two hours, natural cosmic radio signals used to monitor the state of the dense polar ionosphere could no longer penetrate it. Meanwhile, the original flare was still in progress, emitting sufficient X-rays to keep day...
May 2020
Protecting areas of scientific importance on the Moon
...a few thousand kilograms of material. Efflux particles and atoms become ionised by solar and cosmic radiation - so forming an ionosphere which could cause opacity to certain radio frequencies. I envisage that the insurance would be activated once the...
June 2020
Titan’s evolving atmosphere
... a stratosphere (from the tropopause to about 450 km), a mesosphere (up to about 600 km) and a thermosphere above, followed by an ionosphere (mainly around 1200 km). The temperature and density profiles measured by the Voyager 1 instruments and the...
June 2021
The next ‘unthinkable’ – global disruption from a solar storm
... Earth’s atmosphere. These x-rays can affect both high and low frequency radio signals by disturbing Earth’s ionosphere through which radio waves travel. The strongest radio blackouts can totally shut down radio communication...
June 2022
Military space – how worried should we be?
... clusters are still there). Explained as a communications test, it was actually part of an attempt to create an artificial ionosphere above the Earth, to improve military communications. The enormous Starfish Prime nuclear explosion over Hawaii (July...
