Cold Plasma Layer Detected High Above Earth

Cold, electrically charged particles have long been suspected to exist tens of thousands of miles above the Earth's surface, and now scientists have detected such ions there for the first time. And they are significantly more abundant at those heights than previously imagined.
Cold is, of course, a relative term. Although these low-energy ions are 1,000 times cooler than what researchers might consider hot plasma, these particles still have an energy that would correspond to about 1 million degrees Fahrenheit (500,000 degrees Celsius). But because the density of the "cold" ions in space is so low, satellites and spacecraft can orbit through them without getting destroyed.
as physicists further map cold plasma around Earth, they could discover more about how it reacts during solar storms and other events, deepening our understanding of space weather. André compared the swaths of low-energy ions to a low-pressure area in our familiar, down-to-Earth weather. "You may want to know where the low-pressure area is, to predict a storm," he said.
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