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CRACKS IN EARTH'S DEFENSES LET SPACE STORMS IN
By Robert Roy Britt
Space.com
December 4, 2003

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/space/20031204/sc_space/crack
sinearthsdefensesletspacestormsin

Earth's natural defenses are routinely compromised by huge cracks that open
up for hours, allowing space storms to pour through like a hurricane through
an open window, scientists announced today.

The finding is expected to help space weather forecasters make better
predictions of the potentially damaging effects of solar storms that buffet
the planet. The tempests threaten satellites at the fringes of the
atmosphere and power grids on the surface.

"We discovered that our magnetic shield is drafty, like a house with a
window stuck open during a storm," said Harald Frey of the University of
California, Berkeley. "The house deflects most of the storm, but the couch
is ruined."

Frey led the work, which is detailed in the Dec. 4 issue of the journal
Nature .

Earth's magnetic field emanates from the poles and extends beyond the
atmosphere and past the highest Earth-orbiting satellites.

The magnetic field absorbs the brunt of a solar storm, which is a huge cloud
of charged particles, ions and electrons. The Sun constantly spits out a
"wind" of these particles. During intense activity, it can shoot a coronal
mass ejection (CME) our way. A CME -- the most damaging sort of solar storm
-- is to the solar wind what a hurricane is to a summer breeze.

Each CME has a magnetic orientation. If it is oriented south -- opposite the
northern orientation of Earth's magnetic field -- the cloud has greater
potential to get through. That much scientists knew.

As early as 1961, theorists suspected that this opposing scenario might
generate cracks in Earth's magnetosphere, as the magnetic field lines of
Earth and the storm connect. A rupture was first detected in 1979, but
scientists have since wondered if they were fleeting or of longer duration.

Discovering that the gaping breaches indeed last hours involved some fancy
formation flying by a fleet of NASA ( news -web sites ) satellites.

In one set of observations, the Imager for Magnetopause to Aurora Global
Exploration (IMAGE) satellite looked upward and monitored ions slamming into
an area of the upper atmosphere above Earth's North polar region. It was
determined to be a crack almost as big as California.

During the event, a team of four other satellites, called Cluster, flew
above the IMAGE craft and directly through the crack. Cluster detected the
solar wind ions streaming through the rip in Earth's defense system.

The crack, which widened at higher altitudes, appeared to remain open
continuously for nine hours.

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