image: NASA's THEMIS mission has overturned a longstanding belief about the interaction between solar particles and Earth's protective magnetic field. This new discovery could help scientists predict when the solar storms that can disrupt power grids, satellites and even GPS signals, could be especially severe. This image relates to an article that appeared in the May 8, 2009, issue of Science, published by AAAS. The study, by Dr. Jacob Bortnik of the University of California, Los Angeles and colleagues was titled, "An Observation Linking the Origin of Plasmaspheric Hiss to Discrete Chorus Emissions." view more
Credit: Image courtesy of NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center