{"id":42136,"date":"2020-03-02T06:00:19","date_gmt":"2020-03-02T10:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/swling.com\/blog\/?p=42136"},"modified":"2020-02-22T09:40:24","modified_gmt":"2020-02-22T13:40:24","slug":"e-skip-on-the-red-planet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/swling.com\/blog\/2020\/03\/e-skip-on-the-red-planet\/","title":{"rendered":"Sporadic E on the Red Planet"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>(Source: Inverse<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Thanks to\u00a0NASA\u2019s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN)<\/a>\u00a0mission to Mars, you may soon never need to fiddle with the tuning dial on a car radio again.<\/p>\n

When we listen to songs on the radio, the sound travels via radio waves that are given out by a transmitter and then received by a receiver \u2014\u00a0in the case of a car, the car’s antenna is the receiver.<\/p>\n

Radio waves travel in the form of electromagnetic radiation from one antenna to the other. The journey, however, isn’t always perfect.<\/p>\n

Sometimes, there is a sudden spike in the amount of hot gas in the upper layer of Earth’s atmosphere which causes interference in radio communications. If you are tuned into a favorite station, that could result in static, or for one radio station to be replaced by another.<\/p>\n

This phenomenon, known as sporadic E layer, is difficult to study on Earth because that part of the planet’s atmosphere is hard to reach with satellites. As a result, scientists can’t predict when they will occur \u2014\u00a0leaving us to fiddle with dials.<\/p>\n

But thanks to\u00a0MAVEN<\/a>, a spacecraft traveling 300 million miles away from our planet, we could finally have the solution.<\/p>\n

MAVEN detected sporadic E layer in Mars\u2019 upper atmosphere, and scientists are hoping to be able to use the Red Planet as an off-Earth laboratory to study the phenomenon up close. Already, the data have provided new insights into the cause of radio static, which also affects communications with aircrafts and military radars.[…]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n