Plasma bubbles may have caused radio interference over battlefield

Science : Motivated by a communications blackout in 2002 that led to a deadly US military operation in Afghanistan, researchers at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory have been looking more closely into the incident. Although it had been assumed that the problem lay with faulty radio equipment or blockage by the country’s mountainous terrain, Michael Kelly and colleagues say the radio interference was more likely caused by the presence of a large bubble of ionospheric plasma, which can form as the Sun strips electrons from gas molecules high in the atmosphere. Able to grow more than a thousand kilometers in size, the bubbles can cause electromagnetic turbulence that distorts radio waves. Thanks to data from NASA’s Thermosphere, Ionosphere, Mesosphere Energetics and Dynamics satellite, which had been flying in the area at the time, the researchers have been able to confirm that there was indeed a plasma bubble between the battlefield and the radio communications satellites. Whether that caused the problem is still unknown. However, the discovery has led to the development of an improved warning system to prevent future problems such as occurred during Operation Anaconda.