Looking for a powerful cosmic particle accelerator?  The Earth has one nearby.

• Researchers from Johns Hopkins University and Northumbria University have discovered that collisionless shock waves, found in the universe, could be the cosmic engines driving subatomic particles to extreme speeds.
• These shock waves are born in plasma, a gas of charged particles that can conduct electricity and interact with magnetic fields.
• The study was based on data from three NASA missions: the Magnetic Multiscale (MMS) mission, the Time-History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms (THEMIS) mission, and the Acceleration, Reconnection, Turbulence, and Electrodynamics of the Moon’s Interaction with the Sun (ARTEMIS) mission.
• The study proposes a comprehensive new model that includes recent theoretical advancements in physics that can explain the acceleration of electrons in collisionless shock environments.
• The electron injection problem, a long-standing mystery in astrophysics, has been a key role in producing cosmic rays.
• The researchers used real-time data from the MMS, THEMIS, and ARTEMIS missions to study how the solar wind interacts with the earth’s magnetosphere and about the upstream plasma environment near the moon.
• They found a transient but large-scale phenomenon upstream of the earth’s bow shock, where electrons in the earth’s foreshock seemed to acquire more than 500 keV of energy.
• The researchers suggest that these high-energy electrons were generated by a complex interplay of multiple acceleration mechanisms, including the interactions with various plasma waves and with transient structures in the earth’s bow shock and foreshock.
• The refined acceleration model provides new insights into the workings of space plasma and other phenomena within our solar system.