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NASA discovery: Voyager probes detect electron bursts traveling 1 million mph

8385 / Pixabay

Even as probes from space agencies like NASA are already roaming through space at long distances, there is still something infinitely mysterious about the universe that surrounds our planet. NASA’s Voyager probes have detected electron bursts that are coming in at a speed of one million miles per hour.

NASA has revealed that the Voyager 1 and 2 probes have discovered a new kind of electron burst. These electron bursts were found to be traveling through space at a speed of around one million miles per hour or 1.6 million kilometers per hour. The probes detected the bursts within days of their acceleration, later observing slower, lower-energy plasma oscillations through the cosmic medium as a result of the electron bursts.

Electron bursts are a product of coronal mass ejections that involve ejecting large amounts of plasma into space. This event also results in shock waves rippling through our solar system. At the same time, the shock waves also accelerate the fast-moving electrons - charged particles that come from supernovas. This has accelerated the cosmic rays along the magnetic lines between the stars in the same medium.

“Physicists believe these electrons in the interstellar medium are reflected off of a strengthened magnetic field at the edge of the shock wave, and subsequently accelerated by the motion of the shock wave,” said the team from the University of Iowa. “The reflected electrons then spiral along interstellar magnetic field lines gaining speed as the distance between them and the shock increases.”

Scientists hope to understand how these shock waves and cosmic radiation come from flaring stars.

NASA made history when two astronauts, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, were launched by the agency to the Moon. Armstrong and Aldrin would ultimately become the first men to set foot on the surface of the moon. However, before the astronauts would later end the Space Race between the US and Russia, the Soviet nation actually sent an unmanned spacecraft onto the lunar surface three days prior to Apollo 11.

In a documentary series titled “Secret Failed Soviet Moon Landing” by the Dark Docs Youtube Channel, it details how Russia carried out a highly classified mission that involved an unmanned spacecraft named Luna 15. Luna 15 was launched in the hopes of being the first vehicle to collect soil samples from the Moon and bring it back to Earth, as the Russians had known that the US would ultimately beat them in sending the first man on the Moon.

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