They discover a mysterious melody that ‘sings’ the comet that visits … – The Vanguard

Madrid. (EP) .- The Rosetta Plasma Consortium (RPC) has bare mysterious melody that Comet 67P / Churyumov-Gerasimenko is singing in space.

The main researcher Karl-Heinz Glassmeier RPC, Technical University of Braunschweig, Germany, explains that RPC consists of five Rosetta instruments that provide a wide variety of additional information about the plasma environment around 67P / CG kite.

Plasma is the fourth state of matter, an electrically conductive gas to be transported electric currents and magnetic fields. The instruments are designed to study a range of phenomena. The interaction of 67P / CG are included with the solar wind, a continuous stream of plasma emitted by the Sun; changes in activity in the comet; the structure and dynamics of the tenuous plasma atmosphere of the comet, known as the coma; and physical properties of the comet nucleus and the surface.

But an observation has caught scientists by surprise RPC. The comet appears to be emitting a “track” in the form of fluctuations in the magnetic field in the vicinity of the comet. It is being performed at 40-50 Milihertzos, well below human hearing, which usually picks up sound from 20 Hz to 20 kHz.

To make the music

audible to the human ear, the frequencies were increased by a factor of about 10,000. The music is clearly heard by the magnetometer experiment (RPC-Mag), for the first time in August when approached Rosetta 100 kilometers of 67P / CG.

Scientists think that should be produced in any mode comet activity as neutral particles released in the space in which electrically charged due to a process called ionization. But the exact physical mechanism behind the oscillations remains a mystery.

“This is exciting because it is completely new to us. We did not expect this and we are still working to understand the physics of what is happening” says Karl-Heinz. .