{"id":9234,"date":"2025-04-10T23:04:09","date_gmt":"2025-04-10T23:04:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/9234\/"},"modified":"2025-04-10T23:04:09","modified_gmt":"2025-04-10T23:04:09","slug":"wormhole-spotted-over-alaska-was-actually-a-science-experiment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/9234\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Wormhole’ Spotted Over Alaska Was Actually a Science Experiment"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"A<\/a>Vapor tracers from a rocket, launched March 29, 2025, formed a halo visible over central Alaska. | UAF photo by Eric Marshall <\/p>\n

A giant \u201cwormhole\u201d that appeared in the skies of Alaska a couple of weekends ago may have worried some folks on the ground. They needn\u2019t have feared, it was actually a successful science experiment. <\/p>\n

Photographers on the ground captured the enormous swirling ring that measured roughly 70 miles high and 15 miles wide. <\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>Vapor tracers as seen from Venetie, Alaska, ground observation station. \"Silhouetted<\/a>Vapor tracers as seen from Venetie, Alaska, ground observation station. <\/p>\n

The wormhole came from a sounding rocket launched in Fairbank on March 28. The launch came from a mission called \u201cAWESOME\u201d \u2014 which stands for Auroral Waves Excited by Substorm Onset Magnetic Events. Space Weather reports<\/a> that the team has launched three sounding rockets into the aurora borealis. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe ring was spectacular. It was extremely bright and absolutely unmissable,\u201d Mark Conde, a space physics professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute, says on AWESOME\u2019s interactive mission website. <\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cAnyone who was outside at the time and looked up would have been treated to a visually, stunning and appealing display in the sky.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>Vapor tracers as seen from Eagle, Alaska, ground observation station. \"A<\/a>Vapor tracers as seen from Eagle, Alaska, ground observation station. \"Night<\/a>Vapor tracers as seen from Toolik, Alaska, ground observation station. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis very clean ring shape was easy to track. Looking at the way it distorted over time gives us a detailed view of local-scale motions in the atmosphere,\u201d Conde adds. <\/p>\n

The AWESOME project aims to learn how auroras make the upper atmosphere move like boiling water. Usually, the top layer of the atmosphere \u2014 the thermosphere \u2014 doesn\u2019t have convection because it\u2019s hotter at the top and cooler below, which stops that kind of motion.<\/p>\n

But when auroras appear, they can heat the lower part of the thermosphere, shaking things up like a pot on a stove. The AWESOME rockets release vapors to track this movement, which can affect satellites and navigation systems.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>UAF photo by Eric Marshall <\/p>\n

\u201cChange in composition of the atmosphere has consequences for communication, navigation, and spacecraft operations,\u201d Conde says on the AWESOME website<\/a>. \u201cAnd we need to know the extent of those consequences.\u201d <\/p>\n

Conde tells Space Weather that the mission has been a success and the team is now combing through the data. <\/p>\n

Image credits:<\/strong> University of Alaska Fairbanks<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Vapor tracers from a rocket, launched March 29, 2025, formed a halo visible over central Alaska. | UAF…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9235,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3844],"tags":[6305,6306,6307,70,6308,413,16,15,6309],"class_list":{"0":"post-9234","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-alaska","9":"tag-aurora","10":"tag-rocket","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-sciencexperiment","13":"tag-space","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-wormhole"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9234\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}