Alexa Halford

Spectrum

Halford discusses the NASA BARREL project and space weather. The Balloon Array for Radiation-belt Relativistic Electron Losses campaign will help study the Van Allen Radiation Belts and why they change over time by using balloons launched in Antarctica.

Transcript

Speaker 1: Spectrum's next.

Speaker 2: Mm [inaudible].

Speaker 3: Welcome [00:00:30] to spectrum the science and technology show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program bringing you interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists.

Speaker 1: Good afternoon. I'm your host, Rick Karnofsky. Our guest today is Alexa Helford. Alexa is a postdoc at Dartmouth who studies based weather. She's involved with the balloon group there who recently finished their 2013 launch of the NASA barrel or [00:01:00] balloon array for radiation belt, relativistic electron losses campaign. 20 balloons. Went up in Antarctica in January and February. Next year there'll be doing it again. They're doing this to track where radiation goes when it leaves the radiation belts. Alex, I welcome to spectrum. Thank you. Can you talk to us a little bit about space weather?

Speaker 3: Yeah, it is the coolest thing ever cause it's weather, but in space. What does that mean? So whenever you hear of like solar storms [00:01:30] or geomagnetic storms, which tend to make the news, that space weather, the sun always is spewing out junk at us. It's usually a combination of protons, electrons, and magnetic fields. Sometimes there's ions in there.

Speaker 1: Well, but when that stuff

Speaker 3: hits us, that space, whether it can sometimes create a geomagnetic storm, which is where we have our magnetic fields of the earth being completely rearranged and energy being transported normally into the inner magneto sphere where it can disrupt [00:02:00] things like satellites and eventually caused currently in our ionosphere, which can induce currents in the ground and that can cause problems for technologies even here on earth.

Speaker 1: And how frequently do these problems crop up? It depends. So the Sun has an 11 year cycle where it,

Speaker 3: it goes from having low activity, which we just came out of an incredibly quiet solar minimum just a few years ago and now we're starting to go into a region of higher activities. So we have a lot more [00:02:30] solar storms occurring.

Speaker 1: It depends on the solar cycle. This one looks like it might be a little quieter than the last one,

Speaker 3: but you can have multiple storms during the week. In the more northern or very southern regions of the world where you're near the polar caps, you are more effected by

Speaker 1: I sub storms, which can happen three times a day. People study space, weather, what do they hope to do? They hope to eventually it. Okay.

Speaker 3: [00:03:00] Right now we are sometimes able to do now casting. So we can essentially tell you what the weather's like right now. And that's really good for us. We do, I mean can't just go outside and look. No, it's a little bit harder than that. No, I especially is putting together space weather packages and the van Allen probes are currently producing space weather data products as well. So we're getting a lot better at this. They usually give you at least a good, you know, [00:03:30] three or four days heads up as to if something's coming at us. They've gotten really, you know, pretty good given the type of data we have for even being able to predict if it's going to affect us or not. And what can we do with those predictions? So the radiation belts are where a lot of this, the damaging space weather effects occur.

Speaker 3: They have highly relativistic electrons in them and these highly relativistic electrons can greatly affect ours [00:04:00] satellites. So what happens is any satellites sitting in the radiation belts actually will start gaining charge and we can get lightning strikes that actually occur across the [inaudible], the sides of the satellite, which in itself is quite damaging. Anytime you're hit by lightning is never really a good thing, but the really relativistic one's the killer electrons this week. Call them actually can bury themselves into the software and flip bits and so by flipping the bit they can send phantom [00:04:30] messages to the satellite and sometimes that message is to turn itself off or kill itself and not respond to ground control end. Essentially the satellite is dead floating in space. Satellite companies, when they find that there's going to be a solar storm that's going to hit us and possibly affect their spacecraft, they turn them off because if they turn them off then you know you're not going to get as much charging and you're not going to have as many problems.

Speaker 3: What kinds of impacts do we see here on earth? So [00:05:00] back in 1989 there was a solar storm that actually induced currents in the power grid and blacked out. Most of the eastern seaboard of Canada and the North Eastern part of the u s and that was, that was quite a big problem where right now we've actually increased the connectivity of our power grids so that if the same storm were to happen about half the u s would be blacked out. Would there be actions that we could actually take if yes, so what you can do is you can actually turn off the grid or turn [00:05:30] off parts of the power grid so that you're not going to blow a transformer by having this huge amount of new current. In fact, one of the first things with space weather affecting our technology was way back with the telegraphs. They were able to run the telegraphs for hours without any energy because of the induced currents from the solar storms.

Speaker 2: [inaudible]

Speaker 4: are listening to k a l x Berkeley. [00:06:00] I'm talking with Alexa Helford about space weather.

Speaker 3: We have stereo, which is one of the coolest missions ever, so it's two satellites. One is [inaudible], a head of earth around Earth orbit and the other one is falling behind [00:06:30] earth orbit and they're looking at the sun. So this is the first time we've ever had a three dimensional view of the sun and now they've gotten far enough around that. We're actually able to see what's going on behind the sun. So before we've always had to to kind of gas and use a Sonogram essentially. Yeah. To try to see what's on the other side of the sun. And now we have actual images of what's going on back there [00:07:00] and we're learning such amazing things from it. It's just the coolest thing ever. And besides, you get to wear 3d classes to view the pictures from it, which is always kind of cool. We're learning so much more about th what happens and, and how things are forming on the surface of the sun that it's really [inaudible] interesting time to kind of be a scientist and learning about [inaudible] this, you know, how space weather's happening.

Speaker 3: Uh, besides that we have, you know, satellites in, in our own magnetosphere [00:07:30] that we can look at and we have ground-based magnetometers, which they're all really great with helping kind of understand the environment right now. What kinds of things do you have to measure and track and how do you track them in order to make predictions? That is really, that's an interesting question, but one of the cool things is, is us learning how to do all of this. Right now the ace satellite sits at the l one point, which is a stable orbit between the earth and the sun. We get magnetic [00:08:00] field particle data, so like densities and velocities, uh, from there, and we can use that to try to predict what it's coming at us. Unfortunately, what hits ace might not necessarily hit us, but it's our best predict. You're right now, it's coming to the end of its lifetime and we really need something up there, unfortunately, because we would want a space weather monitor up there, which [00:08:30] would help with science and research.

Speaker 3: There's a fight going on as to who should be funding that and who wants to do that because it is, it is a large project, but it's something we need. Just like we need a tsunami warning systems. We need a space weather warning system. Can we talk about barrel a little bit? Yeah, so barrel is the campaign that I'm working on. Barrel is a, an array of that. We're going to be sending up in January of this year and January of [00:09:00] 2014 as well and possibly into February for both of those campaigns. Hopefully we'll be launching 20 balloons each year from two different stations in the antibiotics. So the British Halle Bay station and the South African Sinise station. And what we're going to do is these balloons are like what big weather balloons. They're going to be kind of drifting at 30 kilometers up in altitude and we'll be looking for x-rays.

Speaker 3: [00:09:30] So when particles from space get perturbed during these geomagnetic storms, they can actually fall enough far enough down the field lines, these magnetic field lines that they'll hit the ionosphere in atmosphere where they can collide with different particles in neutral atoms and molecules and give off x-rays. And then we can measure those x-rays. So by backing out from that, that x-ray data, we can figure out what type of particles we're [00:10:00] being precipitated. So essentially we're looking at reins of highly relativistic particles and Artica we're looking in Antartica because if you remember your elementary school days when you played with bar magnets and, and iron fillings, you get, you know, if you have a bar magnet with the north and South Pole, you get these kind of curved arcs that go into and out of the northern and southern Poles. And the earth is just like that. So the earth is essentially a large [00:10:30] bar magnet and a, it has its dipole field that that kind of, you know, most of these field lines come in and out of the different poles.

Speaker 3: And so when you're looking at these particles, they're going to be following those field lines. So they're just Tracy tracing out those lines that the iron fillings do with the bar magnet. And so these, these electrons and protons will come down the field lines and enter the atmosphere at the pole. So it's the best place to try to find stuff. And also there's not a whole [00:11:00] lot of things that the balloons can hit in the Antarctic, either from the two stations. The two stations give us a better range. And so by launching from both places, we'll be able to cover more land in Antarctica. And so at most we might have eight balloons up at any given time. And so we want to make sure that they're spaced as well as possible. You know, to be able to get the best coverage and having multiple loons up is going to give us an amazing opportunity that we [00:11:30] don't often have in space physics. You know by having multiple balloons, we're going to be able to take a look at how large some of these events are, how much ground they actually cover as well as how long they last. One of the things we can't answer is when you see these waves in space, how large are these waves? We know their wavelengths, but we don't know the region over which they occur.

Speaker 2: [inaudible]

Speaker 1: [00:12:00] this is spectrum on k a l x Berkeley. I'm Rick Karnofsky talking with Alexa Helford of the barrel project, a mission to study the van Allen radiation belts.

Speaker 2: [inaudible]

Speaker 1: [00:12:30] is barrel intentionally complementary to existing techniques?

Speaker 3: Yeah, so in fact it is one of the first opportunity missions under the van Allen probes and so we're hoping to have conjugate measurements with them. So what that means is that we hope to essentially be on the same field minds as the satellites out in space. So while the satellites can measure the plasma out there and see these waves that are occurring in [00:13:00] space and see the different particles there, we're going to be able to then see how many of those particles actually made it down the field line. And it's one of the first missions with [inaudible] satellites and balloons that will really be able to do this. And, and hopefully because we're sending up 20 this year, hopefully we'll have lots of conjunctions. So that would be really great. And right now we're just

Speaker 1: preparing for that. And do you have like a rough estimate of how high the satellites are versus how high the balloons are? Yes. Are the satellites,

Speaker 3: they have [00:13:30] a pair of jeans. So their closest approach to the earth is, I believe around [inaudible], somewhere between three and 600 kilometers. So they're quite a bit higher. But when we have these conjunctions, these satellites are going to be at least four to six earth radii eye away from us.

Speaker 1: So what kind of instrumentation is on these balloons?

Speaker 3: So we are looking at, um, the magnetic fields. We have a gps transmitter there so that we can tell where [00:14:00] we are. That's kind of useful. And we have the [inaudible] Spectrometer, which is going to be looking at the x-rays and then we also have iridium phones essentially on there so we can actually get back our data quite quickly, which is very nice. It also means that we don't have to try to retrieve all 20 balloons. We've painted all of the payloads white and that's to actually help with the temperature control of all the instrumentation on board. But looking for it white

Speaker 1: box [00:14:30] on a white continent turns out to be a very difficult thing. Right. And so these balloons go up, there's a small team over there and then you get all the data back at Dartmouth. Yes. What do you do with that? We are going to analyze it and have lots of fun working with all this data. Um, I'm really excited about it. We're also then going to be working

Speaker 3: with the van Allen probes team and any other satellite mission that we can get in contact with that wants to look at our data. We're more than happy [00:15:00] to do that with. But having been an opportunity mission with the van Allen probe sets, the one we're really focusing on and really talking to and working with. So we're going to be looking at [inaudible] the different times when when we have uh, conjunctions and if there are any events. Now for this first mission, our conjunctions are going to be happening in the dawn sector. And so in the dawn sector, the waves that we're looking at are these micro bursts, which we [00:15:30] think are caused by course waves. Um, and this is going to be an exciting time cause it's one of the first times we're actually going to be able to look at this and, and, and be certain about it or relatively certain about it. And what's a course way, it's a course waves are these really fun little waves. They're caused by an electron, cyclotron instability. So it's all kind of generated by these electrons out in space. But if you listen to them, we can actually get way for them. So just like the radio waves you're hearing with us talking, [00:16:00] we get way forms of these, these waves in space and we can play them back through the radio and they sound like there. There sounds like a course of birds in the morning, which is why they're called course waves.

Speaker 1: We have a recording of these course waves from the NASA van Allen probes.

Speaker 2: [00:16:30] [inaudible]

Speaker 4: the sound you just heard [00:17:00] was a chorus with an electromagnetic phenomenon caused by plasma waves in Earth's radiation belts. Hello, you're listening to spectrum on k a Alex Berkeley talking with Alexa Helford about space weather

Speaker 2: [inaudible]

Speaker 1: it's sort of like terrestrial weather [00:17:30] where so much can influence it. Oh, you rattled off a large list of different particles, all of which have different masses and, and um, would presumably hit us at different times, right? Yeah. Um, how, how do you possibly keep up with all that data?

Speaker 3: Um, through statistics? That's what I love to do is data statistics and we're starting to get to a point where we have large enough databases to look at. And actually statistics [00:18:00] is, is, I mean, I know a lot of people hear the word statistics and they think, oh, boring, boring, boring. But it is just so cool. Um, because like you said, we're have so many different things going on and like tresha whether there's so many different factors that we don't necessarily know about, we think we understand what physics is up there. Um, but we know that we're missing some of it because our models don't exactly predict what's happening. So with a lot [00:18:30] of physics, when you're working in a lab, you can control everything. And so your theories can be directly tested because you can control every little bit to match the theory in space.

Speaker 3: We can't control anything. It is our laboratory and we can't tell it what to do. We put satellites and balloons and ground-based magnetometers and, and all these different, uh, instruments out there and hope that something interesting happens. So do other planets also experienced space weather? [00:19:00] Yeah. Yeah, they do. In fact, it's, it's really kind of cool when you start looking at it. So mercury has its own little magnetosphere. It's much smaller than ours. So things happen on a much faster time scale. Right now there's a satellite out there called messenger, which is studying the space weather at mercury. And it's really neat to compare it to what we see on the earth because we can see things happening so much faster. So that's really neat. Venus has [00:19:30] some interesting stuff going on there. It doesn't have a magneto sphere, but we can, we can use that as another comparison cause it's a similar sized body to us.

Speaker 3: And so it has interesting things on its own. Mars used to have a magnetosphere [inaudible] but Mars is really interesting because that's where we want to go and send people someday. And I really think we should because if anything, humans have always tried to explore and try to go out farther. And so Mars is our new new world, [00:20:00] but we have to be careful going there because it doesn't have the protection of a magnetosphere like we do. So in order to protect the astronauts, we need to have better space weather warning systems in play. And these are all things that people have been thinking much harder about than I ever had. But it's really an exciting thing to think about cause that that's solar wind, it doesn't stop when it hits us. It continues out there. Jupiter, Jupiter is a massive thing. Need a sphere. [00:20:30] It is so cool.

Speaker 3: It even has a planet that has a magnetosphere. So there's a main Nita sphere inside of magnetosphere, but Jupiter's magnetosphere is dominated by io. I O sends out tons and tons of sulfur ions from volcanoes and so drives a lot of the main use for dynamics we see there. Saturn on the other hand doesn't have a volcanic moon, quite like Io. [00:21:00] It has other geysers which seem to develop its rings. But a lot of the, the space weather events we see in its magneto sphere actually come from the solar wind. But by the time the solar wind reaches Saturn, it is so diffuse. But we still see things like Aurora out there. We see Aurora on the, um, on the Jovian magnetosphere as well. Um, and that's just so cool. And then once you, you know, you get farther and farther out and each of the big gas giants has its own magnetosphere and they're all [00:21:30] unique in their own way and it just gives us so many different comparisons to our own planet so we can learn so much more by studying theirs as well, which is just kind of cool.

Speaker 3: We've only been a field really since about 1957 when the first satellite, we're not, we mean people have been studying space weather for a lot longer than that. But you know, we weren't ever able to get measurements where stuff is happening before we had satellites. So we're right at the [00:22:00] beginning and it's something incredibly exciting time. Yeah. To be in the field cause we're just learning what it's like up there. There's so much we don't know. And every time we put up a new satellite we get back new data. Even if we thought that we'd just be seeing the same kind of thing, there's always something new happening. And so it's so incredibly exciting just to, to see what's out there. Well with that Alexa Alford, thanks for joining us. Thanks so much for having me

Speaker 5: [inaudible]

Speaker 6: [00:22:30] and now for some science news headlines. Here's an ana at Coolin and Renee Ralph

Speaker 5: [inaudible],

Speaker 6: professor in sleep expert, Matthew Walker explained in conversation with UC Berkeley new center that when we are young we have deep sleep that helps the brain store and retain new facts and information, but as we get older, the quality of our sleep [00:23:00] deteriorates and prevents those memories from being saved by the brain at night. In a recent study, UC Berkeley scientists discovered that there is a relationship between poor sleep, memory loss and brain deterioration. They found that poor sleep and old age affects memory loss. There are many stages of sleep, one of them being deep sleep, which is an important part of transporting short term memories to longterm memories. UC Berkeley researchers are now looking into therapeutic treatments for memory loss, such as electrical [00:23:30] stimulation to improve deep sleep and thus improve memory. You see, Berkeley researchers see this new discovery as an exciting opportunity to potentially help people remember more of their lives as they get older.

Speaker 3: UC Berkeley have designed

Speaker 6: a program to help decode ancient lost languages. Previously, human linguists have manually reconstructed languages by analyzing the relationships between the language and the patterns and sound change. The program takes modern [00:24:00] child languages, information about their word meaning and pronunciation and outputs, a rough approximation of the mother language. For example, if French and Spanish were input a language resembling Latin might emerge, the computer system we use together linkages across child languages to mathematically determine awards. First form. In a study published in the National Academy of Sciences Journal, the makers revealed that more than 85% of the system's reconstructions were identical to manual reconstructions [00:24:30] performed by linguist. Using this unique model, the system is essentially able to rewind the evolution of child languages all the way back to the original. The vast data crunching capabilities of the program have allowed scientists to begin seeing larger trends of spreading languages and banishing sounds well.

Speaker 6: The computer system has extended the reach of computing in the field of linguistics. It's creators have stressed. They intend it to be used as a complimentary tool to human linguist, not as a replacement. A regular feature of spectrum [00:25:00] is a calendar of some of the science and technology related events happening in the bay area. Over the next two weeks, we'll hear once more from Anna and then Renee meet the animals up close at the Randall Museum home to over 100 animals that can not survive in the wild. Expect to see California wildlife such as rodents and fib. Ian's a great horned owl and even a tortoise every Saturday in March. Starting this Saturday, the ninth in San Francisco, doors open at 11:00 AM admission is free [00:25:30] in conjunction with San Francisco Sunday street program. The exploratorium. We'll have a day long road show featuring moving trucks with art, film, food, performances and activities.

Speaker 6: The show will linger in three areas of the city, the mission Bayview and Embarcadero on its way to its nighttime finale at peer 15 this will take place in San Francisco this Sunday, March 10th from 11:00 AM to 10:00 PM for more information on performance times and locations, please visit [00:26:00] the exploratorium website which is exploratorium.edu stress and its effects on body and mind have always been biologically mysterious. This Monday, March 11th Dr Aaron Elica Nali will give her answers to some of those mysteries. Dr Canale is an assistant project scientist at the national primate research center in the Monday colloquium. She will speak about her research in the field of psychobiology. She will focus on the psychosocial effects of [00:26:30] early life stress. Dr [inaudible] has been studying relationships between biological and fostered offspring of rhesus monkey pairs and observing effects of exposure to early life stress on the relationships she has identified genes that cause physiological differences in the brain structure of these monkeys that suffered early stress.

Speaker 6: She will also speak about the corresponding differences in the brains of human child abuse victims. The colloquium will be on March 11th from three to 4:30 PM in five [00:27:00] one-on-one Tolman hall on the UC Berkeley campus in case that's not enough science for one day. Also on March 11th Marvin l Cohen, professor of the Graduate School of physics at UC Berkeley will give a speech on condensed matter physics condensed matter physics is also known as goldilocks physics because its primary focuses are skills of energy, time and size that are somewhere in the middle. Consequently, this branch of physics has become one of the most interdisciplinary Professor Cohen will describe some of the fascinating [00:27:30] research involving semiconductors superconductors and nanoscience. He will also relay a few observations about Einstein and his seminar research in condensed matter physics. The free event is open to and aimed at all audiences and should provide an illuminating glimpse into a lesser known branch of physics.

Speaker 6: It will be held on March 11th from five to 6:00 PM at the eye house on the corner of Bancroft and Piedmont. The march science at Cal lecture is titled Cloud spotting at Saturday [00:28:00] and titan learning about weather from a billion miles away. The talk will be given by a motto Adom Covex, a researcher in the astronomy department at UC Berkeley. He received his phd in physical chemistry in 2004 at cal studying the photochemical kinetics of hydrocarbon aerosols in planetary atmospheres. He will describe how measurements from telescopes on earth, the Cassini spacecraft that is still orbiting the Saturn system and the Huguenot probe that landed on the surface of Titan. [00:28:30] Saturn's largest moon all inform our knowledge of weather in the Saturn system. The lecture is scheduled for Saturday, March 16th at 11:00 AM and the genetics and plant biology building room 100 on the northwest corner of the UC Berkeley campus.

Speaker 5: [inaudible]

Speaker 4: the music you [00:29:00] heard during say show we spend the Stein and David from his album book and Acoustic

Speaker 5: [inaudible].

Speaker 4: It is released under a creative Commons license version 3.0 spectrum was recorded and edited by me, Rick Karnofsky and by Brad Swift. Thank you for listening to spectrum. You're happy to hear from listeners. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via email. All right. Email address is spectrum [00:29:30] dot [e-mail] join us in two weeks at this same time.

Speaker 5: [inaudible]

Speaker 4: [inaudible].

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