Crack in earth’s magnetic shield has been spotted by the largest and most advanced cosmic ray monitor, located in India. The cosmic ray monitor talked above is the GRAPES-3 muon telescope. It is available at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research’s Cosmic Ray laboratory in Ooty, Tamilnadu.
According to the scientists, the explosion happened as a huge cloud of plasma evicted from the solar corona hit the earth surface at a great speed (of about 2.5 million kilometers per hour). This resulted into immense compression of earth’s magnetosphere from 11 to 4 times the radius of the earth. The explosion also caused a harsh geomagnetic storm. The GRAPES-3 muon identified a massive galactic cosmic ray explosion of about 20 GeV last year, for about a couple of hours.
The geomagnetic triggered by the explosion caused aurora borealis and radio signal blackouts in many nations at high latitudes. This claim has been made through a study published in the journal Physical Review Letters this week. Well, life still exists on earth as the magnetosphere of the earth extended across a radius of millions kilometer, that appeared as the first protective line. Otherwise, it could have caused destruction through rigorous and extremely powerful radiation of solar and galactic cosmic ray flow. Solar storms can result into extreme destruction to life on earth by paralyzing massive electrical power grids, important GPS systems, satellite functionalities and other communication means.
Numerical simulations done by the GRAPES-3 researchers reveal that earth’s magnetic shield cracked a bit as a result of magnetic reconnection, which led the lower energy galactic cosmic ray particles enter within earth’s atmosphere. Scientists also claimed that the earth’s magnetic filed twisted these cosmic rays. They claim that the particles turned linearly from the day half of the earth to the night half, where it was spotted as an explosion by the GRAPES-3 muon telescope in midnight on 22 June 2015.
This analytical output was revealed post-rigorous simulations over many weeks through the 1280-core computing farm that was developed by the native physicists and engineers of the GRAPES-3 team at the Cosmic Ray Laboratory in Ooty.
