Schoolchildren identify the sounds caused by the solar storm

Students were able to identify the noises caused by a solar storm in Earth's magnetic shield, as part of a research project at Queen Mary University in London.

The findings, by a group of grade 12 students from the Eltham Hill School, in southeastern London, have now been published in the scientific journal Space Weather.

The project encouraged London schools to take part in university research, and the resulting study presents a new approach to conducting scientific research by making the data audible so that students can explore it by listening to it.

The magnetic shield of the Earth, which protects us from the harmful rays of the Sun and from more distant sources, is beset by a symphony of very low frequency sounds. These sounds, or waves, are too serious for us to hear, but a researcher at Queen Mary has made their satellite recordings audible by dramatically speeding up their reading.

The group of students identified a series of waves whose tone decreased over several days. They discovered that this event had occurred after a coronal mass ejection or a "solar storm" caused a serious disturbance of the Earth's space environment.

The study shows that the waves looked a bit like the vibrations of a pinched guitar string that forms a distinct note, but that is applied to the magnetic field of the Earth, while the pitch change was due to the process recovering our space environment after the storm.

Such events have rarely been discussed, but by taking advantage of the accelerated reading of audible data and the astonishing capabilities of the human ear, the study reveals many similar patterns present in the data showing that '' ''. they are much more common than previously thought.

Martin Archer, a space physicist at Queen Mary's Faculty of Physics and Astronomy, and project lead, said: "The results could transform the field, allowing more members of the public to contribute to the research simply By listening to data and finding What Scientists may have forgotten, we hope it will become more widespread as we live in the era of big data.

Isobel Currie, one of the students of the Eltham Hill School involved in the project, added: "It was really amazing to hear how much the event we have found was important and that it will form the basis of a serious scientific article.We have gained a lot During our research, we have gained experience and acquired many skills that will be useful during our studies. They have allowed us to better understand the work done at this level. "

Disruptions to the earth's magnetic shield such as this pose risks to our daily lives, as they can damage technologies such as power grids, GPS and even airlines. These waves are one of the means by which energy from solar storms can be transferred into the Earth's space environment.

The study highlighted the fact that some important and relatively common methods were lacking in current methods and that new techniques might help.

Dr. Archer said, "Making data audible is unusual and generally used only by the researchers themselves." Engaging the public in research, known as citizen science, tends to focus on data or information. crowdsourcing analysis in contrast to this more exploratory method, but the study shows that useful and unexpected scientific results can flow from this combined approach. "

The data was extracted from the United States Geostationary Operational Environment satellites, managed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Depending on the potential demonstrated in the document, they will make all the audible data available to the public.

Researchers will now seek to know what disturbances of the Earth's magnetic shield lead to the decrease of these sounds and why. This will help to better understand what is happening and improve weather forecasts in space.

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