Chinese scientists find evidence of lunar tide effects on Earth's plasmasphere

A team of Chinese scientific researchers and their foreign colleagues has for the first time discovered evidence for a signal induced by the Moon's tidal influence on the Earth's plasmasphere, the inner part of the magnetosphere, which is filled with cold plasma.Conducted jointly by scientists from Shandong University, the Institute of Geology and Geophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and other institutes, the study, which was published recently in the journal Nature Physics, indicated that lunar tidal effects have already been reported in the Earth's crust, oceans, atmosphere, and near-ground geomagnetic field, although it had not yet been clarified whether any effect existed in plasma-dominated regions.Co-principal author of the paper and researcher at Shandong University Xiao Chao said the team made the new findings by analysing data from more than 10 satellites over the past four decades, adding "new findings expand our understanding of Earth-Moon interactions in a direction that had not previously been considered."Xiao pointed out that these findings also provide important clues for future investigations into wider regions and two-body celestial systems, including other planetary systems in our solar system and beyond.Scientific researchers concluded findings by pointing out that they found that the lunar tidal-induced signal in Earth's plasmasphere has distinct diurnal and monthly periodicities, which are different from the dominant semi-diurnal and biweekly variations in lunar tidal effects observed previously in other regions.