Scientists baffled by unusual upper atmosphere shrinkage

Scientists baffled by unusual upper atmosphere shrinkage

www.cnn.com

An upper layer of Earth's atmosphere recently shrank so much that researchers are at a loss to adequately explain it, NASA said on Thursday.

The thermosphere, which blocks harmful ultraviolet rays, expands and contracts regularly due to the sun's activities. As carbon dioxide increases, it has a cooling effect at such high altitudes, which also contributes to the contraction.

But even these two factors aren't fully explaining the extraordinary contraction which, though unlikely to affect the weather, can affect the movement of satellites, researchers said.

"This is the biggest con

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[edit on 7/18/2010 by semperfortis]

I wonder if this is due to increased activity on the Sun, or if there is a more nefarious reason such as HAARP causing this?

An "unexplained" shrinkage of a layer of atmosphere which protects the whole planet is certainly worth some investigation.

It's also interesting that they say that a "significant" shrinkage of the thermosphere won't affect the weather, whereas several environmentalists (and just common sense) says this should have a direct impact .....

www.cnn.com
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reply to post by babybunnies

Scientists Say Thermosphere Undergoing "Unusual" Amount of Shrinkage

Maybe the thermosphere just went swimming in a really ice cold pool. Nothing causes shrinkage like that.

Correct me if i am wrong, but when HAARP is turned on, a part of the atmosphere disappears. Weathers its the thermo-sphere or another part, without a doubt it would have affects on all levels of the atmosphere.

My 2 cents. And before people say "Awh another haarp conspirator" look at the information provided by a lovely movie called Holes in the heavens.

Well it says that it is regularly affected by the sun's activity.

And we are also entering a solar maximum which many scientists are claiming is going to be very active.

And that this thermo-sphere contraction is more intense than usual.

The three pieces of the puzzle fit very nicely together.

If you find out it was something more than that, let me know.

And BTW Gandhi, if it were something like HAARP, to get the energy required to create an effect this large would be enormous. They would have to turn on like every ionosphere heater on Earth at once and still need more juice. That is just my opinion though. I honestly think the energy requirements to do this mechanically would be astronomical.

This is very interesting and I would like to know more about the contractions of the atmosphere.

[edit on 17-7-2010 by Lupin]

[edit on 17-7-2010 by Lupin]

reply to post by gandhi

Ok.

No part of the atmosphere disappears. A small area of the ionosphere (above Gakona, Alaska) gets heated. The amount of heating is far less (1,000s of times) than that of the Sun on a daily basis.

reply to post by muzzleflash


That's what I was thinking too. Only something as massive as our sun could possibly create such shrinkage, and the up and coming solar flare-a-thon is about to drop into our laps.

I don't really see anything sinister behind this, and I have more trust in the natural defences of the Earth than I have faith in my fellow humans.

reply to post by babybunnies
I'm not a physicist, actually I'm just now scraping paint of an old floor that I want to sand, but just reading and listening to links provided here, I learned a couple things that make me wonder about this thermosphere collapse. The common gases and rare gases transfer heat from the earth to the upper thermosphere. They are excited by heat and when struck by particles in the solar winds, they emit radiation in the form of heat, begin to cool, and then work there way back down towards the earth to absorb more heat from the surface. Now the sun IS emitting generous quantities of UV in the near absence of sunspots. The solar winds though, are at low levels so I'm not convinced it's the sun. The interesting thing is that scientists have been saying for years that our solar system has entered a very energetic cloud of high energy stardust and all the planets have been heating up as a result. Nasa has also stated in a report that we are seeing the highest levels of radiation from deep space since the beginning of our current space age.

science.nasa.gov...

Is it possible that this collapse is related to the radiation in this 'energy cloud'
and it's cooling effect on our atmosphere by massive particle collisions? Are these high energy particles at sufficient levels for that?

Its seems to correspond with the recent solar activity - but I think sun (hot) and shrinkage of the thermosphere not sure there would be a connection. Interesting, its been a while since the scientists have been confused regarding planet earth.

I do hope we continue to get periodic updates, would like to stay tuned to this one.

OY Memoryshock, why did you close TheOracle's thread about this subject when it was started TWELVE HOURS BEFORE this one ?

reply to post by gotredeemed

No scientists are saying the planets are heating as a result of the interstellar dust cloud.

In the same manner that the Earth's magnetosphere prevents the solar wind from hitting our atmosphere and stripping it away (as it did Mars'). The Sun's heliosphere prevents the interstellar dust cloud from entering the Solar System.

Yes, the level of cosmic radiation is higher than has been seen in the recent past. It is unrelated to the dust cloud. This is because of low solar activity. Low solar activity allows more cosmic rays to reach the solar system. This happened during the Maunder Minimum as well.

Hundreds of years ago, cosmic ray fluxes were at least 200% to 300% higher than anything measured during the Space Age.

science.nasa.gov...


And no, this is not a contradiction. Cosmic rays are not the same as the dust cloud.




[edit on 7/19/2010 by Phage]

They probably know exactly what is causing it - but the mandatory non-disclosure contracts & or military classification of any & all info that might cause "concern" in the public prevents them from being honest about the cause of things like this. NASA has repeatedly stated any data confirming inbound meteors/comets/Nibiru and data that confirms the existence of EBE's that they will keep all such data secret. The recent articles about the censoring of the Kepler planetary data just reinforces how seriously they are about deceiving the public. Remember not only the Brookings instructions but also more recent RAND Corp. papers confirming this policy is still in effect.