Indian scientists detect crack in Earth’s magnetic shield

Telescope in TN records galactic cosmic ray bursts of 20 GeV lasting 2 hours in 2015

The world’s largest and Cosmic Ray Laboratory in most sensitive cosmic Ooty, Tamil Nadu, recorded ray monitor, located the cosmic rays of about 20 in India, has recorded a GeV last year lasting for 2 burst of galactic cosmic hours. The burst occurred rays that indicates a crack when a giant cloud of plasma in Earth's magnetic shield. ejected from the solar The burst occurred when a corona, and moving with a giant cloud of plasma ejected speed of about 2.5 million from the solar corona kmph struck Earth, causing struck Earth at very high severe compression of speeds causing massive its magnetosphere from 11 compression of Earth's to 4 times the radius of magnetosphere and triggering Earth. It triggered a severe severe geomagnetic geomagnetic storm that storm. The GRAPES-3 generated aurora borealis muon telescope located at and radio signal blackouts Tata Institute of in many high latitude Fundamental Research's countries, according to the study published in the journal Physical Review Letters. Earth's magnetosphere extends over a radius of a million km, which acts as the first line of defence, shielding us from continuous flow of solar and galactic cosmic rays, thus protecting life on Earth from high intensity energetic radiations. Numerical simulations performed by the GRAPES-3 researchers, including Pravata K Mohanty, indicate that Earth's magnetic shield temporarily cracked due to the magnetic reconnection, allowing the lower energy galactic cosmic ray particles to enter our atmosphere. Earth's magnetic field bent these particles about 180-degrees, from the day-side to the night-side of the Earth where it was detected as a burst by the GRAPES-3 muon telescope around mid-night on 22 June 2015. The data was analysed and interpreted through extensive simulation over several weeks by using the 1280-core computing farm that was built inhouse by the GRAPES-3 team. —