
Supersonic plasma jets discovered - vermontdevil
http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/Swarm/Supersonic_plasma_jets_discovered
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dahart
Something I somehow missed in school and only found out recently is that
temperatures in the upper atmosphere are super high. The thermosphere is often
reported as going up to ~2k degrees Celsius. (And you wouldn't even know it if
you were there, due to the low density.)

I'm curious what supersonic means in this case - what is the speed of these
plasma jets; what is supersonic speed in the ionosphere?

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TeMPOraL
Wow, I completely forgot the ranges of different atmosphere regions since I
was in secondary school.

This picture here makes me wonder:

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8c/Earth%27...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8c/Earth%27s_atmosphere.svg)

Did any spacecraft manage to fly _through_ an aurora? Wouldn't it be cool if
someone did that and shoot photos from within?

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dahart
Check this out [https://www.nasa.gov/content/flying-through-an-
aurora](https://www.nasa.gov/content/flying-through-an-aurora)

Also google image search for "space shuttle aurora"... spectacular pictures!

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ygra
Ah, good point, I forgot that the ISS effectively passes through that region
anyway.

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unityByFreedom
T-minus 10 minutes until Musk explains there is a way to easily harness the
electrical energy from these jets, and it'll only take Tesla a year to do it.

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cat199
Tesla probably already did it in a year - too bad his notebooks were 'lost'
...

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michaelcampbell
Is there a history behind this quote? Would love to hear it.

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McKayDavis
Nikola Tesla was supposedly working on the production and wireless
transmission of power -- including a "death beam". After his death, many of
his papers were claimed to be missing:

[http://www.pbs.org/tesla/ll/ll_mispapers.html](http://www.pbs.org/tesla/ll/ll_mispapers.html)

Interestingly, one of the main investigators into the incident was Dr. John G.
Trump (uncle of President Trump).

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jlebrech
so here's our space elevator, nature already created it for us.

problem it only takes us up from the 2nd floor.

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lolc
And to get any lift you have to disintegrate into molecules first.

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jlebrech
you don't have to be in the epicenter.

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eternalban
So what's the best way to harvest this energy?

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SjuulJanssen
Anyone else who clicked on the link and expected airplanes?

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officelineback
Yeah I kind of thought that, but "discovered" gave pause to that thought,
since it's not "invented."

