In the new study, published Aug. 26 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, researchers revealed that the second explosion temporarily created a large hole in the ionosphere — the part of the atmosphere between 50 and 400 miles (80 and 650 kilometers) above Earth’s surface where gases have been ionized, or stripped of electrons, and turned into plasma.
“Usually, such holes are formed as a result of chemical processes in the ionosphere due to interaction with engine fuel,” study lead author Yury Yasyukevich, an ionosphere physicist at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Solar-Terrestrial Physics (ISTP), said in a translated article from the Russian state media site TASS. This is the first known time that an ionospheric hole has been created by a “catastrophic phenomena” such as a human-made explosion, he added.