Space & Physics

In search for red aurorae in ancient Japan

Ryuho Kataoka, a Japanese auroral scientist, played a seminal role in searching for evidence of super-geomagnetic storms in the past using historical methods

Published

9 months ago

February 5, 2024

Karthik Vinod

Professor Ryuho Kataoka in his office at NIPR, with the fan-shaped painting behind him, Picture courtesy: RK Works

Auroras seen on Earth are the end of a complex process that begins with a violent, dynamic process deep within the sun’s interior.

However, studying the depths of the sun is no easy task, even for scientists. The best they can do is to observe the surface using space-based telescopes. One problem that scientists are attempting to solve is how a super-geomagnetic storm on Earth comes to being. These geomagnetic storms find their roots in sunspots, that are acne-like depressions on the sun’s surface. As the sun approaches the peak of its 11-year solar cycle, these sunspots, numbering in the hundreds, occasionally release all that stored magnetic energy into deep space, in the form of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) (which are hot wisps of gas superheated to thousands of degrees).

If the earth lies in the path of an oncoming CME, the energy release from their resultant magnetic field alignment can cause intense geomagnetic storms and aurorae on Earth.

This phenomenon, which is astrophysical and also electromagnetic in nature, can have serious repercussions for our modern technological society.

Super-geomagnetic storms, a particularly worse form of geomagnetic storm, can induce power surges in our infrastructure, causing power outages that can plunge the world into darkness, and can cause irreversible damages to our infrastructure. The last recorded super-geomagnetic storm event occurred more than 150 years ago. Known as the Carrington event, the storm destroyed telegraph lines across North America and Europe in 1859. The risk for a Carrington-class event to happen again was estimated to be 1 in 500-years, which is quite low, but based on limited data. Ramifications are extremely dangerous if it were to ever happen.

However, in the past decade, it was learnt that such super-geomagnetic storms are much more common than scientists had figured. To top it all, it wasn’t just science, but it was a valuable contribution by art – specifically ancient Japanese and Chinese historical records that shaped our modern understanding of super-geomagnetic storms.

Ryuho Kataoka, a Japanese space physicist, played a seminal role in searching for evidence of super-geomagnetic storms in the past using historical methods. He is presently an associate professor in physics, holding positions at Japan’s National Institute of Polar Research, and The Graduate University for Advanced Studies.

“There is no modern digital dataset to identify extreme space weather events, particularly super-geomagnetic storms,” said Professor Kataoka. “If you have good enough data, we can input them into supercomputers to do physics-based simulation.”

However, sunspot records go until the late 18th century when sunspots were actively being cataloged. In an effort to fill the data gap, Professor Kataoka decided to be at the helm of a very new but promising interdisciplinary field combining the arts with space physics. “The data is limited by at least 50 years,” said Professor Kataoka. “So we decided to search for these red vapor events in Japanese history, and see the occurrence patterns … and if we are lucky enough, we can see detailed features in these lights, pictures or drawings.” Until the summer of 2015, Ryuho Kataoka wasn’t aware of how vast ancient Japanese and Chinese history records really were.

“There is no modern digital dataset to identify extreme space weather events, particularly super-geomagnetic storms,” said Professor Kataoka.

In the past 7 years, he’s researched a very specific red aurora, in documents extending to more than 1400 years. “Usually, auroras are known for their green colors – but during the geomagnetic storm, the situation is very different,” he said. “Red is of course unusual, but we can only see red during a powerful geomagnetic storm, especially in lower latitudes. From a scientific perspective, it’s a very reasonable way to search for red signs in historical documents.”

A vast part of these historical red aurora studies that Professor Kataoka researched came from literature explored in the last decade by the AURORA-4D collaboration. “The project title included “4D”, because we wanted to access records dating back 400 years back during the Edo period,” said Professor Kataoka.

“From the paintings, we can identify the latitude of the aurora, and calculate the magnitude or amplitude of the geomagnetic storm.” Clearly, paintings in the Edo period influenced Professor Kataoka’s line of research, for a copy of the fan-shaped red aurora painting from the manuscript Seikai (which translates to ‘stars’) hangs on the window behind his office desk at the National Institute of Polar Research.

The painting fascinated Professor Kataoka, since it depicted an aurora that originated during a super-geomagnetic storm over Kyoto in 1770. However, the painting did surprise him at first, since he wondered whether the radial patterns in the painting were real, or a mere artistic touch to make it look fierier. “That painting was special because this was the most detailed painting preserved in Japan,” remarked Professor Kataoka. “I took two years to study this, thinking this appearance was silly as an aurorae scientist. But when I calculated the field pattern from Kyoto towards the North, it was actually correct!”

Fan-shaped red aurora painting from the ‘Seikai’, dated 17th September, 1770; Picture Courtesy: Matsusaka City, Mie Prefecture.

The possibility to examine and verify historical accounts using science is also a useful incentive for scholars of Japanese literature and scientists partaking in the research.

“This is important because, if we scientists look at the real National Treasure with our eyes, we really know these sightings recorded were real,” said Professor Kataoka. “The internet is really bad for a survey because it can easily be very fake,” he said laughing. It’s not just the nature in which science was used to examine art – to examine Japanese “national treasures” that is undoubtedly appealing, but historical accounts themselves have contributed to scientific research directly.

“From our studies, we can say that the Carrington class events are more frequent than we previously expected,” said Professor Kataoka. There was a sense of pride in him as he said this. “This Carrington event is not a 1 in 200-year event, but as frequent as 1 in 100 years.” Given how electricity is the lifeblood of the 21st century, these heightened odds do ingrain a rather dystopian society in the future, that is ravaged by a super-geomagnetic storm.

Professor Kataoka’s work has found attention within the space physics community. Jonathon Eastwood, Professor of Physics at Imperial College London said to EdPublica, “The idea to use historical information and art like this is very inventive because these events are so rare and so don’t exist as information in the standard scientific record.”

There’s no physical harm from a geomagnetic storm, but the threat to global power supply and electronics is being increasingly recognized by world governments. The UK, for instance, identified “space weather” as a natural hazard in its 2011 National Risk Register. In the years that followed, the government set up a space weather division in the Met Office, the UK’s foremost weather forecasting authority, to monitor and track occurrences of these coronal mass ejections. However, these forecasts, which often supplement American predictions – namely the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) – have failed to specify previously where a magnetic storm could brew on Earth, or predict whether a coronal mass ejection would ever actually strike the Earth.

The former occurred during the evacuation process for Hurricane Irma in 2017, when amateur radio ham operators experienced the effects of a radio blackout when a magnetic storm affected the communications network across the Caribbean. The latter occurred on another occasion when a rocket launch for SpaceX’s Starlink communication satellites was disrupted by a mild geomagnetic storm, costing SpaceX a loss of over $40 million.

Professor Kataoka said he wishes space physicists from other countries participate in similar interdisciplinary collaborations to explore their native culture’s historical records for red aurora sightings. He said the greatest limitation of the AURORA-4D collaboration was the lack of historical records from other parts of the world. China apparently boasts a history of aurora records longer than Japan, with a history lasting before Christ himself. “Being Japanese, I’m not familiar with British, Finnish or Vietnamese cultures,” said Professor Kataoka. “But every country has literature researchers and scientists who can easily collaborate and perform interdisciplinary research.” And by doing so, it’s not just science which benefits from it, but so is ancient art whose beauty and relevance gains longevity.

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Karthik Vinod

Karthik is a science writer, and co-founder of Ed Publica. He writes and edits the science page. He's also a freelance journalist, with words in The Hindu, a prominent national newspaper in India.

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Space & Physics

Chandrayaan-3: The moon may have had a fiery past

A magma ocean might’ve wrapped the ancient moon, suggests findings from India’s robotic lunar mission, Chandrayaan-3.

Published

2 weeks ago

October 30, 2024

Karthik Vinod

The earth's moon. Credit: Ed Publica

On 23rd August last year, India’s Chandrayaan-3 made history being the first to soft-land on the moon’s south polar region. The landing marked the end of the high-octane phase of the mission. But its next phase was a slow-burner.

Pragyan, the suitcase-sized rover, that hitched a ride to the moon aboard the lander, Vikram, rolled off a ramp onto the lunar surface. It traversed along the dusty lunar surface slowly, at a pace even a snail could beat. Handlers at the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) didn’t want the suitcase-sized rover to risk stumbling over a rock or near a ridge, and jeopardize the mission.

The whitish spots are material excavated from the moon’s interior.

Nevertheless, the rover had a busy schedule to stick to. It was to probe the lunar soil, and relay that scientific data back to earth. Pragyan covered 100 meters in two weeks, before it stopped to take a nap ahead of a long lunar night. At the time, the rover’s battery pack was fully charged, thanks to the on-board solar panels soaking up sunlight during the day.

But lunar weather is harsh, especially at the south pole, where Pragyan napped, temperatures can reach as low as -250 degrees centigrade during the night. Added to that, a lunar night lasts two weeks. ISRO deemed Pragyan had only a 1% chance to survive.

Later, the expected happened, when the rover went unresponsive to ISRO’s pings to wake up.

But ISRO said the rover achieved what it was tasked to do. It relayed data all along for two weeks, examining soil from some 23 locations around the mission’s landing point, Statio Shiv Shakti. As months passed by, a slew of discoveries were made. Sulphur was discovered at the south pole, early on while the mission was ongoing. And only a few months ago, Pragyan found evidence of past weathering activity at the south pole.

But since August this year, research teams from ISRO and the Physical Research Laboratory in Ahmedabad, India, reported Pragyan’s most important findings yet – one of which sheds light onto the moon’s origins.

Chandrayaan-3’s Vikram lander, seen from the Pragyan rover’s camera

Moon and the Early Earth

Chandrayaan-3 had carried a radioactive passenger to the moon’s surface – curium-244.

The radioactive curium helps lase the surface: firing alpha particles (which are helium nuclei) at the dusty terrain. Some of these alpha particles bounce off the dust, whereas others evict electrons from the lunar soil, thereby producing x-ray emissions. Keeping watch is the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) on-board the Pragyan rover. In August, PRL scientists published findings in the journal, Nature, based on APXS data, reporting discovery of ferroan anorthosite.

It wasn’t the first ever detection per se of ferroan anorthosite. In fact, Apollo 11 had brought back anorthosite rocks to earth, where they were identified as such. That was in 1969, and Apollo sampled them from the equator. Successive missions by the Soviet Union and most recently China affirmed likewise from mid-latitude – equatorial regions as well. But Pragyan’s detection of the rock type was the first ever from the polar region.

The Pragyan rover’s payload.

Anorthosites are common on earth. In fact, just a year after the Apollo 11 sampled the rock, scientists had evidence of the earth and the moon’s entangled history. The authors noted the similar composition between these rocks, that are geographically widespread. Furthermore, ferroan anorthosite is an igneous rock that forms on earth when hot lava produced in volcanic eruptions cools down.

And scientists had piled up evidence in support of a similar process that underwent on the moon. The anorthosite rocks on the moon are old, in fact, more than 4 billion years ago – a figure close to the earth’s inception with rest of the solar system – around 4.5 billion years. Scientific consensus has been that the moon was formed from remnants of a collision between the early earth and a rogue Mars-sized planetary body.

But the collision energy would have yielded a moon that was molten. A lava blanketing the surface – aka a global magma ocean. As this ocean cooled, minerals amongst which is plagioclase (a class of feldspar) crystallized and formed the anorthosite rocks on the moon. It’s commonly called the lunar magma ocean hypothesis.

When Pragyan treaded over the dusty lunar terrain, it didn’t register the anorthosite as a physical rock per se. Instead, it observed remnants of the rock, as fine powder.

Meteorites beat down rocks to fine powder, as they slam into the moon from space with regular impunity. On earth, the ground is saved by the presence of an atmosphere. But the moon virtually has no atmosphere. Nor does it have water to wear down the rocks. The surface is extremely hot during the lunar day – in fact, when Chandrayaan-3 landed on the moon, the surface temperature was some 50 degrees centigrade. Just a few months ago, Pragyan revealed possible signs of rock degradation from the rims of a crater.

Moon dust opens doors to the past

The fact the moon doesn’t (and can’t) sustain an atmosphere helps it make an attractive destination to learn more about our planet and the satellite’s shared origins. There’s no chemistry to remove traces of the moon’s early evolution from the lunar dust. As such, the dust opens doors to the past.

Space explorations missions soft-landing on the surface study this dust – or sample and shuttle them to earth for scientists to study them in detail.

In fact, Pragyan revealed a crater that’s amongst the oldest ever discovered on the moon. The findings were published in the journal, Icarus, in September. Hidden in plain sight, the rover’s navigation camera, NavCam, spotted subtle stretch marks on the surface, that were confirmed later with the Chandrayaan-2 orbiter (which has been orbiting the moon since 2019). In fact, this crater was found buried under nearby craters, most notably the South Pole-Aitkin basin located 350 km away. The basin is the largest impact crater in the entire solar system (some 2,500 km wide and 8 km deep) touted to have formed millions of years ago.

And this became subject to an earlier paper that PRL scientists authored, and was published in August. Pragyan identified material thought to have emerged from the moon’s interior. The APXS instrument picked up unusually high magnesium content in the vicinity. The authors speculate the meteorite that created the basin probably dug up magnesium from deep inside the moon’s upper mantle, and spewed them into Pragyan’s vicinity.

But some experts believe in an alternate explanation. They believe the magnesium might have come from surface rocks in the vicinity, and not from the upper mantle. In fact, the authors acknowledged this amongst other possible alternatives. Nonetheless, the Chandrayaan-3’s findings doesn’t dispute the lunar magma ocean hypothesis either, if not backing it outright. Saying that, the theory lives on to fight another day.

Space & Physics

A Vision for the Cosmos: Insights from Indian Space Research Organisation chief S Somanath

The ISRO Chairman underscored India’s commitment to developing reusable rockets, an initiative that promises to reduce costs and increase the frequency of missions

Published

2 weeks ago

October 30, 2024

EP Staff

S Somanath. Image credit:PIB

On October 26, 2024, the prestigious Sardar Patel Memorial Lecture at Rang Bhawan in New Delhi, India’s capital, brought together students, scientists, and space enthusiasts to explore the future of India’s space ambitions. The event, hosted by Akashvani, Indian state-owned public radio broadcaster, featured a compelling lecture by Dr. S. Somanath, Chairman of India’s space agency ISRO and the Space Commission. His address, titled “Indian Space Odyssey: In Search of New Frontiers,” was not just a presentation of current achievements, but a bold declaration of India’s aspirations in the vast expanse of space.

India’s Space Vision 2047

Dr. Somanath captivated the audience with a glimpse into India’s Space Vision 2047, particularly the ambition to achieve a human landing on the Moon. He introduced the innovative concept of a The Bharatiya Antariksha Station (Indian Space Station), envisioned as a launchpad for lunar missions. This ambitious plan reflects a paradigm shift in India’s approach to space exploration, emphasizing not just technology but also strategic vision.

A highlight of Dr. Somanath’s lecture was his discussion on the advancements in lander technology. He underscored ISRO’s commitment to developing reusable rockets, an initiative that promises to reduce costs and increase the frequency of missions. This technological evolution is crucial for India’s future missions, including a proposed exploration of Venus—where scientists aim to study its mysterious surface and atmosphere.

Dr. Somanath articulated a compelling narrative about harnessing space technology for national development

A Drive for National Development

Dr. Somanath articulated a compelling narrative about harnessing space technology for national development. Underlining ISRO’s mission, he emphasized the organization’s focus on addressing India’s needs in natural resource management, satellite communication, and navigation. Moreover, he expressed a profound commitment to inspiring the next generation of scientists and engineers, which is vital for sustaining India’s growth in the space sector.

The Chairman highlighted that ISRO’s achievements are not merely technological milestones but also reflections of India’s indomitable spirit. He conveyed a vision where space technology serves to enhance the quality of life on Earth, addressing global challenges and fostering international cooperation.

Space & Physics

India’s space economy soars: A $130 million VC fund to ignite innovation

The $130 million Venture Capital Fund is more than just a financial investment; it’s a catalyst for growth, innovation, and self-reliance in India’s space sector

Published

2 weeks ago

October 28, 2024

EP Staff

Image credit: Pixabay

In a dynamic leap toward becoming a global leader in space technology, India is set to launch a $130 million Venture Capital (VC) Fund dedicated to its burgeoning space sector. Announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, this initiative, spearheaded by the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorization Centre (IN-SPACe), aims to ignite innovation and support the country’s growing number of space startups.

A New Era for Space Startups

For many aspiring entrepreneurs in India’s space industry, access to funding has often been a significant barrier. Traditional lenders are typically hesitant to invest in the high-risk, high-reward arena of space technology. This new VC Fund is designed to fill that gap, providing essential capital to startups looking to take off.

“The fund is a game-changer,” says Dr. Anjali Rao, a space technology analyst. “It signals to investors that the government believes in the potential of our space industry. We’re going to see a surge in innovative solutions coming from Indian startups.”

Bridging the Funding Gap

The $130 million crore initiative is not just about money; it’s about fostering a supportive ecosystem. Over the next five years, the fund will allocate capital strategically, with plans to invest between $18.3 million and $30.5 million annually. This structured investment approach is designed to cater to both early-stage startups and more established firms, ensuring that companies at various levels of maturity can benefit.

For startups in their infancy, funding will range from $1.22 million to $ 3.66 million. More established companies with proven track records could receive up to $7.32 million. This tiered approach allows us to support a diverse range of companies and their unique needs.

Talent Retention and Economic Growth

One of the critical goals of the VC Fund is to prevent brain drain. Many skilled professionals have moved abroad for better opportunities, but this fund aims to retain talent by creating a thriving domestic ecosystem. “We’re not just creating jobs; we’re building a community of innovators who want to stay and grow in India,” says Dr. Meera Gupta, a startup consultant based in Mumbai, India.

Currently, India’s space economy is valued at approximately USD 8.4 billion, capturing about 2% of the global market. The government aims to quintuple this figure to USD 44 billion by 2033

The anticipated impact on employment is significant. The fund is expected to generate thousands of jobs across various sectors, from engineering to data analysis. As companies expand, indirect job creation in logistics and support services will also flourish.

Global Ambitions

Currently, India’s space economy is valued at approximately USD 8.4 billion, capturing about 2% of the global market. The government aims to quintuple this figure to USD 44 billion by 2033, with a strong focus on increasing exports. This vision positions India as a formidable player in the international space arena.

For startups in their infancy, funding will range from $1.22 million to $ 3.66 million. More established companies with proven track records could receive up to $7.32 million

As countries around the world recognize the strategic importance of their space sectors, India’s initiative aligns with global trends. Countries like the UK, Italy, and Japan have established similar funds to stimulate innovation and private sector participation. “India is taking a bold step in this direction, and the potential is immense,” remarks Dr. Rao.

Looking Ahead

As the launch of the VC Fund approaches, excitement is building within the Indian space community. Startups are already gearing up to apply for funding, eager to leverage the support that will help them bring their visions to life. “This is just the beginning,” says Dr. Gupta. “With the right backing, we can achieve remarkable things.”

The $130 million Venture Capital Fund is more than just a financial investment; it’s a catalyst for growth, innovation, and self-reliance in India’s space sector. As India looks to the stars, the world will be watching to see how this initiative transforms the landscape of space technology.