Resonance in the Van Allen Plasma Belt

Listen and You Can Hear the Universe

by Rebecca Carroll for National Geographic News
May 8, 2009

Earth's Magnetic Field Hisses Due to Distant "Chorus"

Thousands of miles above Earth, a cosmic chorus is filling the heavens with a mysterious, low frequency "hiss."

That's the conclusion of scientists studying data from a set of NASA probes designed to monitor substorms - dramatic exchanges of energy among charged particles that spark the auroras at Earth's poles.

The charged particles come from the sun and get trapped in loops around our planet by Earth's magnetic field.

Knowing how the hiss influences the loops, known as Van Allen radiation belts, might help scientists predict their behavior - a good thing, because the belts can bombard satellites, spacecraft, and even spacewalking astronauts with dangerous radiation.

Although we're currently experiencing an unprecedented lull in solar activity, space is expected to get much stormier after 2012, when the sun should enter an active phase that will hurl more charged particles toward Earth.

Lucky Break

The faint "shh" sound that scientists now call the plasmaspheric hiss is the result of an electromagnetic wave in Earth's radiation belts.

The hiss wave appears to reduce levels of dangerous electrons in the radiation belts by deflecting the particles from their stable trajectories and sending them into the dense upper atmosphere, where they are lost.

For more than four decades scientists have been puzzled by what was generating the hiss wave, noted study leader Jacob Bortnik, of the University of California, Los Angeles.

A previous model had suggested that the hiss wave might evolve from a more distant radio wave called chorus, so named because its discoverers in the 1950s thought it sounded like "a rookery of birds heard from a distance," Bortnik said.

But proving this idea presented a challenge. Researchers would need simultaneous, high-resolution observations from two sophisticated satellites recording both hiss and chorus from different locations at a moment when Earth's magnetic field was particularly active.

By chance, one of Bortnik's students found exactly what they needed in data from two of NASA's five THEMIS satellites.

"We didn't think that we'd be lucky enough to get this kind of gift from nature," Bortnik said.

The probes showed a definite correlation between the two waves, confirming that the hiss wave comes from chorus.

Weather Forecasts

Understanding the hiss wave's origins could allow scientists to build more accurate models of the radiation belts, which could ultimately help predict space weather.

Studying space weather, Bortnik added, is similar to studying weather patterns here on Earth.

"Step number one is just to understand the system," he said, and then maybe there's hope that researchers can predict things in time to avoid danger.

Analysis

This greatly increasing hissing of the Van Allen plasma belt is one of the many signs that the Earth is currently undergoing a shift to a higher energy level, or quantum state. The humming of the Van Allen belt is generated by the infrasound resonance of the plasma field itself, as plasma acts like a piezoelectric crystal transducer of solar energy into lower wavelegnths that are more conducive to life on Earth. In this way the Van Allen belt acts like a shield that protects the Earth from some of the more harmful solar radiations.

The thickness and effectiveness of this shield may be increasing with time as more and more energy moves through it, suggesting that its field strength and protectiveness increases with the levels of solar radiation which it transduces. This would suggest that if the magnetic field strength and corresponding infrasound resonance levels on Earth continue to dramatically increase as we are seeing, the layer of plasma enshrouding the Earth will be correspondingly increased. What would the Earth look like if completely surrounded in auroras? The answer to this question may be found in the Native American prophecies of the Red Dawn.

The increasing infrasound hum observed in the Van Allen belt is also causing drum-like beating and thumping aboard the Int'l Space Station. Native American prophecies of the Hopi culture also describe the final signs before the coming of the Red Dawn: "And this is the Ninth and Last Sign: You will hear of a dwelling-place in the heavens, above the earth, that shall fall with a great crash. It will appear as a blue star. Very soon after this, the ceremonies of my people will cease."

The Native American wisdom is completely supported by the extensive evidence and reports of unusual electrical events taking place on the ISS, and on the Earth itself. The Space Station will soon be destroyed by electrical failures due to infrasound resonance and needs to be safely evacuated.

Specific and profound electromagnetic changes are causing major shifts on the Earth's surface as the global pattern of sacred energy emerges with the rapid onset of magnetic reversal. Waves of piezoelectric fires are simultaneously occurring all over the planet, in waves of increasing activity in Messina, Italy, Bodibe, South Africa, Kishtwar and Ratria, India; Seattle, Washington; and Santa Barbara, California.