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Oct 23, 2022

Auroras blasted a 250-mile-wide hole in Earth’s ozone layer

Posted by in category: particle physics

Auroras set off spectacular light shows in the night sky, but they are also illuminating another reason the ozone layer is being eaten away.

Although humans are to blame for much of the ozone layer’s depletion, observations of a type of aurora known as an isolated proton aurora have revealed a cause of ozone depletion that comes from space: Charged particles in plasma belched out by solar flares and coronal mass ejections also keep gnawing at the ozone layer. Before now, the influence of these particles were only vaguely known.

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