Plasma fountain

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This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can. (November 2007)

Plasma Fountain is in the North Pole of the Earth. This figure depicts the oxygen, helium, and hydrogen ions that gush into space from regions near the Earth's poles. The faint yellow gas shown above the north pole represents gas lost from Earth into space; the green gas is the aurora borealis-or plasma energy pouring back into the atmosphere.

[edit] Discovery

The plasma fountain was discovered using data from the Retarding Ion Mass Spectrometer on the Dynamics Explorer spacecraft, in the 1980's. Recently, the SCIFER sounding rocket was launched into the plasma heating region of the fountain.

[edit] References

http://satyr.msfc.nasa.gov/TIDE/news/release_98Dec/solar1.shtml