Chorus waves can produce high-energy killer electrons that can damage satellites. Michael Dunning via Getty ImagesScientists have detected something strange in Earths magnetosphere, some 100,000 miles away from the ground. Split-second bursts of energy known as chorus waves were found chirping in an area where theyve never been seen before, baffling researchers.To be clear, theres no actual chirping being heard in space, since space is a vacuum that doesnt transmit sound. Chorus waves, instead, earned their name because they sound like birdsong when converted to audio signals. Theyve been picked up since the late 1960s at the Halley Research Station in Antarctica. NASA has also detected the waves with its Van Allen Probes, which measure the radiation belts surrounding our planet.Until now, these waves were observed to occur close to Earth, around 32,000 miles away. But using NASAs Magnetospheric Multiscale mission, researchers found chorus waves at much more distant locations, placing them in an area that challenges the existing theory on how these perturbations are produced. The findings were published in the journalNature in January.Its a very important paper, says study co-author James Burch of the Southwest Research Institute to Jonathan OCallaghan at Scientific American. This could be occurring anywhere in the universe where theres a magnetic field, which is just about everywhere.Scientists previously thought that chorus waves could only be generated near a dipolar magnetic fieldthat is, one with a north and south pole, like the one surrounding Earth. Theyve also been found around other planets with magnetic fields, such as Saturn and Jupiter.The leading idea suggests these waves are caused by plasma instabilityionized gas thats outside its equilibrium state. This disturbance can lead electrons to behave chaotically, spiraling along Earths magnetic field lines and producing radiation that interacts with other electrons. The resulting chorus waves travel along the curved magnetic field from pole to pole, creating their chirp as they go.But these newly detected waves were found in a strongly stretched, relatively flat and distant region of the magnetosphere, pointing to another possible reason for their occurrence. Instead, they could be produced by changes in frequency across the magnetic field, per Scientific American.Experts arent ruling out the original theory entirely, but the new paper suggests a need for more research. It is a surprising result in a surprising region, and it prompts further investigation of chorus waves in regions in which Earths magnetic field deviates substantially from a dipole,Richard Horne, head of space weather at the British Antarctic Survey who contributed to peer review of the study, writes in a commentary on the paper for Nature.Its very captivating, very compelling, Allison Jaynes, a space weather physicist at the University of Iowa who was not involved in the study, says to Adithi Ramakrishnan of the Associated Press. We definitely need to find more of these events.The team also spotted an electron hole, or an absence of electrons at a particular spot in the wave. That observation offers a key piece of evidence in support of the chorus wave theory, Horne writes.These findings have important practical implications for future space exploration, because chorus waves have the ability to produce high-energy killer electrons that can scramble satellite communications. Understanding these powerful particles could also help protect astronauts on human missions.If youre pumping electrons up to very high energies, you want to know, for crewed spaceflight and spacecraft assets, how many of these killer electrons are in the magnetosphere, Jaynes adds to Scientific American. Chorus waves are very important to understand that.Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.Filed Under: Astronomy, Mysteries, NASA, New Research, Outer Space, Satellites, Weather