Attack of the Killer Electrons 98
Hugh Pickens writes "At the peak of a magnetic storm, the number of highly energetic 'killer electrons' strong enough to damage electronics and human tissue can increase by a factor of more than ten times, posing a danger to spacecraft, satellites, and astronauts. Killer electrons can penetrate satellite shielding, so if electrical discharges take place in vital components, a satellite can be damaged or even rendered inoperable. For many years, the mechanism by which killer electrons are produced has remained poorly understood, in spite of physicists' attempts at solving this puzzle. Now the ESA reports that data shows the increase in the creation of a substantial number of killer electrons is due to a two-step process. First, the initial acceleration is due to the strong shock-related magnetic field compression. Immediately after the impact of the interplanetary shock wave, Earth's magnetic field lines began wobbling at ultra low frequencies. In turn, these ULF waves effectively accelerate the seed electrons (provided by the first step) to become killer electrons. 'These new findings help us to improve the models predicting the radiation environment in which satellites and astronauts operate. With solar activity now ramping up, we expect more of these shocks to impact our magnetosphere over the months and years to come,' says Philippe Escoubet, ESA's Cluster mission manager."
Re:All of My Electrons are Certified Organic (Score:3, Informative)
You mean like Strange matter [wikipedia.org]? I honestly think they just aren't creative sometimes and just say "It's weird stuff, we can't think of a name for it, we're wasting time...let's just call it strange matter."
Re:All of My Electrons are Certified Organic (Score:5, Informative)
You mean like Strange matter? I honestly think they just aren't creative sometimes and just say "It's weird stuff, we can't think of a name for it, we're wasting time...let's just call it strange matter."
The term "strange matter" has a lot more history behind it than you make it sound. The origin of the term "strange" was in connection with mesons observed in cosmic ray data which, given our then-current understanding of QCD, had unusually long ("strange") lifetimes. Eventually it was discovered that the long-lifetime mesons contained quarks which had not been seen before. The quark was thus named the "strange" quark because it was one of the keys to understanding the strange mesons. Now, imagine a non-negligible assembly of matter consisting of mesons and baryons with strange quarks. This matter is called strange matter.
Yes, the term "strange" was originally used because it was a "WTF?" kind of moment, but that happened a long time ago. Strange matter is perfectly well-understood.
Re:All of My Electrons are Certified Organic (Score:3, Informative)
How about X-Rays, Roentgen Rays, Ionizing radiation, Accelerated electrons, etc.
How about them? X-Rays and Roentgen Rays refer to photons, not electrons (except, in English, Roentgen Rays is generally not used). Ionizing radiation is incredibly vague; it's more often used to refer to photons than electrons. Accelerated electrons at least gets the particle right, but is also far too general. A paper on "How are accelerated electrons produced?" could simply answer, "They're accelerated."
Like it or not, "killer electrons" appears to be the preferred term for electrons produced in this manner, at least among some journal papers.
Re:All of My Electrons are Certified Organic (Score:4, Informative)
It's been a few (~ 3) years since I last worked with space weather types, but the technical term they tended to use for the phenomenon was "relativistic electron". That phrase gets the idea across that the electrons are bad because they're haulin' ass at significant fractions of lightspeed.
Natural relativistic electron flux measurements and predictions are some of the most important forecast products of military space weather, just because astronauts and other "high fliers" could suffer health effects (like, die) from it. And also because the military has lots of sensitive orbital assets that can be ordered to shut down and harden themselves if their ground controllers can get enough advance warning.
All of that said, I think that "killer electrons" is a good PR name for the phenomenon. Not even the hardest science is immune to the siren call of public relations, especially if funding and awards can be on the line.
Sad.
Re:All of My Electrons are Certified Organic (Score:1, Informative)
Uhhh, except that X-rays are not electrons...
Re:Faraday cage? (Score:1, Informative)
A traveling electron IS a current...
Killer protons (Score:3, Informative)
Occasionally a relativistic proton arrives with a respectable human-scale energy, measurable in Joules. Cancer is the least of your worries. It could blow your head clean off, or blast a circuit board into smithereens. [Hey MythBusters, are you listening?] We still don't really understand what phenomenon generates single particles with such a ridiculously high speed, but we're pretty sure black holes are involved in some way. Unfortunately you don't get much of a show when they strike the upper atmosphere because they glide to a stop as they generate a shitstorm of particle showers. If they actually hit the ground we might assume they were meteorites, or the hand of God... either shooting at people with bad aim, or punching holes in the ground and commanding us to play golf.
Re:Faraday cage? (Score:4, Informative)
> And how can electrons kill without current?
You can call them "high-energy beta particles" if it makes you more comfortable.
Re:by a factor of X times (Score:1, Informative)
No, ten times is indeed a factor of 10. Ten times is one ORDER OF MAGNITUDE, though. Sheesh. Learn the language.