Speiser motion of electrons in space tagged posts

Oblique view of the reconnection region. Magnetic field direction is represented by the cyan lines. The color trail represents an electron moving in the field. Color of the particle trail represents a dimensionless speed of the particle, with blue for slow and red for fast. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Tom Bridgman

You can’t see them, but swarms of electrons are buzzing through the magnetosphere around Earth. The electrons spiral and dive around the planet in a complex dance dictated by the magnetic and electric fields. When they penetrate into the magnetosphere close enough to Earth, the high-energy electrons can damage satellites in orbit and trigger auroras...