Australian undergraduate student becomes first to map atmospheric plasma tubes

An Australian undergraduate university student has become the first person to map atmospheric plasma tubes that interfere with astronomy observations and civilian and military navigation systems, Fairfax Media reported Tuesday.

The plasma tubes are located in the upper atmosphere, or ionosphere, where photons from the sun dislodge electrons from neutral atoms creating a soup, or plasma of electrically charged particles. This plasma then interacts with the earth's magnetic field, creating field-aligned ducts of plasma.

Cleo Loi, a 23-year old undergraduate student at the University of Sydney, in a world first, divided the seven square kilometer Murchison Wide Field Array in the Western Australia (WA) desert in two.

Similar to the way humans use eyesight, using the left "left eye" and "right eye," Loi triangulated the plasma tubes, creating a three-dimensional dynamic model.

Sydney University research supervisor Dr Tara Murphy said it was an achievement for Loi to not only identify plasma tubes, but also convince the scientific community of her findings without having a prior background in astrophysics.

"When they first saw the data, many of her senior collaborators thought the results were literally 'too good to be true' and that the observation process had somehow corrupted the findings," Murphy said.

Astronomers must understand the structure of Earth's atmosphere when researching the weak electromagnetic signals they receive from quasars, radio galaxies, black holes and similar entities.

"The discovery of the structures is also important because they cause unwanted signal distortions that cold affect our civilian and military satellite-based navigation systems," Loi said. Endi