Forum Freshman
Joined: 17 Mar 2008
Posts: 23
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The whole ionosphere is a planetary-scale glow discharge tube.
Through its intimate coordination and cooperation with the rest of the magnetosphere, including Van Allen radiation belts, the ionosphere serves as a global-scale glow discharge tube.
This hypothesis has the following consequences:
1- There are not only two auroral ovals: the northern and the southern ones, but instead there are two series of auroral ovals: the series of the auroral ovals of the northern geomagnetic hemisphere and the series of the auroral ovals of the southern geomagnetic hemisphere.
2- The traditional northern and southern auroral ovals are only the terminal ones.
3- In between each two successive ovals there is an ionospheric trough separating them from each other.
4- Each one of the auroral ovals has two sectors: a daytime sector and a night time sector.
5- All the daytime sectors of the auroral ovals from the terminal polar one to the equatotial one are normally visual.
6- The nighttime sector of the terminal polar oval is usually visual.
7- Generally, the daytime sectors are almost optically merged.
8- The once thought of as an equatorward extension of the traditional auroral oval, particularly its nighttime sector, is virtually a sequence of transient mergings of the night time sectors of some of the successive enhanced ovals, including the traditional auroral oval as their terminal beginning.
9- A somewhat complete analogy could be held between the ionosphere as a glow discharge tube and a typical electric glow discharge tube. In this respect we can say that:
a- The northern polar cap and southern polar cap are analogous to the anode dark space and Aston dark space, respectively.
b- The traditional northern auroral oval and traditional southern auroral oval are analogous to the anode glow and cathode glow, respectively.
c- The anode dark space, cathode dark space, and Faraday space are analogous to ionospheric troughs. |
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