SpaceX rockets make holes in the Earth's atmosphere: they glow red at night and scare scientists

Despite the name, these red holes in the night sky can hardly be called "polar glow. " Scientists believe that holes appear when SpaceX missiles burn their engines in the Earth's ionosphere - part of the upper layers of the planet's atmosphere, where solar radiation ionizes atoms and molecules, creating an electron protective layer. In focus. Technology has appeared its Telegram channel.

Subscribe not to miss the latest and most intrusive news from the world of science! It is known that rocket manufacturers have been trying to accelerate the schedule recently, but scientists are afraid that it can be dangerous to the Earth. The fact is that the planet's ionosphere plays an important technical role - in fact it provides stability of short -wave radio and GPS signals.

According to Stephen Hammel from McDonald Observatory in Austin (Texas, USA), scientists are still not fully known how these polar glows actually affect the planet's atmosphere. At the same time, scientists fear that the incidence of these red clouds may increase as SpaceX plans to increase the number of launches in the future. Hammel also notes that scientists are still evaluating the impact of red glows on astronomical science.

Scientists also point out that Starlink satellites are in themselves a problem, but it is known. At the same time, the consequences of the launches themselves have not been studied before, but are now attracting more and more attention from researchers.

According to Jeff Baumgardner, this phenomenon is quite unique to SpaceX missiles, which are able to burn their engines to land back to the ground - all this happens at a height near the peak of the ionosphere, so a large hole is formed in the planet's atmosphere. However, some researchers view these red holes in the sky as a rare opportunity. Earlier, Focus wrote that something is forcing a giant gap in the Earth's atmosphere to grow relentlessly: twice as large as Antarctica.