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Last year, a powerful LARID long-range ionospheric radar was built in China on Hainan Island. Using this radar, scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences discovered two huge bubbles of plasma above the pyramids of Egypt and the Midway Islands. They are separated by 9600 km, he writes Interesting Engineering.
Scientists have discovered equatorial plasma bubbles, which are unusual atmospheric phenomena that exist over the territories in the low latitudes of the planet. A strong cause of plasma bubbles is the sudden loss of charged particles in the ionosphere, the upper layer of the Earth's atmosphere.
Plasma bubbles can be hundreds of kilometers wide and disrupt GPS signals and interfere with satellite communications. Chinese scientists have become the first in the world to detect plasma bubbles in the atmosphere using an ionospheric radar.
According to scientists, they managed to observe the movement of plasma bubbles caused by high solar activity for several days. That is, flares on the Sun released a powerful flow of radiation that reached the Earth and led to a change in the ionosphere with the formation of equatorial plasma bubbles. Observing these objects, scientists were able to see how they form and develop over time.
The powerful ionospheric radar has a detection range of 9600 km, and therefore was able to record the appearance of plasma bubbles in the atmosphere both over Africa and over the Pacific Ocean.
Conventional radars have difficulty detecting targets below the horizon due to the curvature of the Earth. But LARID can do this because it emits powerful electromagnetic waves that bounce between the ionosphere and the ground, allowing it to cover long distances.
When the electromagnetic waves collide with the plasma bubbles, part of the signal is reflected back and picked up by the radar antennas.
Initially, the detection range of LARID was 3000 km, but over the past six months, scientists have managed to increase this indicator by 3 times.
Chinese scientists have proposed building three to four additional LARID-like radars in low-latitude regions of the planet to create a network for continuous, real-time monitoring of equatorial plasma bubbles.
