This is why I study these waves – if we can predict when, where and why these waves occur in the space around the Earth, then we could forecast when our satellites might be in trouble and put them into a safe mode. For example, they can give it to the radiation belts, donuts of radiation surrounding the Earth, creating “killer electrons” at extreme energies that can damage our satellites if we’re not careful. Well, in Earth’s “magnetosphere” – the protective magnetic bubble we live in that largely protects us from various dangerous forms of space radiation – these magnetosonic waves can transfer energy around. These too are pressure waves, but with some added magnetism. These kinds of interactions can give rise to the plasma-equivalent of sound waves: magnetosonic waves. These charged particles mean that plasma can have some different properties, for instance they can generate and be affected by electric and magnetic fields. Notice how I say protons, because space (like 99.9% of the entire universe) isn’t filled with gas but with plasma: a different state of matter made of charged particles. In contrast, in interplanetary space on average you’ll find just five protons (which make up the atomic nucleus with neutrons) in the same volume – almost completely empty in comparison … but not quite. Here on the ground there is quite a lot of air around – each square centimetre of it contains 300,000,000,000,000,000,000 molecules. In most cases, this is a series of compressions, where molecules are closer together, and rarefactions, where they are further apart – caused by the molecules themselves moving backwards and forwards. Fundamentally, sound waves are oscillations in pressure which travel through the medium that they’re in.
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