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Mystery of Earth's radiation belts solved
Nature News ^ | 25 July 2013 | Ron Cowen

Posted on 07/25/2013 5:59:47 PM PDT by neverdem

Van Allen belts accelerate their own particles rather than just trapping them.

The two concentric rings of high-speed particles that encircle the Earth are finally giving up the secrets of their origin — 55 years after their discovery. Two NASA probes have found evidence that the Van Allen belts, as the rings are known, are responsible for accelerating the particles, rather than collecting energetic particles that originated elsewhere. Space scientists think that their latest findings1 could also account for the even more energetic belts circling Saturn and Jupiter, as well as high-energy radiation associated with worlds beyond the Solar System and even some Sun-like stars.

For several years after 1958 — when space scientist James Van Allen and his colleagues identified the radiation belts that now bear his name, using instruments aboard the first US space mission — researchers theorized that the rings’ electrons came from distant reaches of Earth’s magnetosphere, the bubble of space dominated by the planet’s magnetic field. They proposed that as the particles drifted closer to Earth and encountered stronger magnetic fields, they would accelerate and settle into a ring-like configuration.

But this type of acceleration process would take days to weeks and best describes radiation belts that vary only gradually over time. In the 1990s, satellites began to reveal that the energy and density of the Van Allen belts changed more quickly. As a result, a competing theory for the origin of the belts' electrons began to take hold: that charged particles do not come from afar, but are produced locally, when electric fields within the belts rip electrons off from wandering atoms and accelerate those electrons to nearly the speed of light. This process could alter the density and energy of the belts on scales of seconds to hours, a theory that matched better...

(Excerpt) Read more at nature.com ...


TOPICS: Astronomy; Science
KEYWORDS: catastrophism; nasa; physics; vanallenbelts
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Electron Acceleration in the Heart of the Van Allen Radiation Belts
1 posted on 07/25/2013 5:59:47 PM PDT by neverdem
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To: neverdem


2 posted on 07/25/2013 6:07:55 PM PDT by smokingfrog ( ==> sleep with one eye open (<o> ---)
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To: neverdem

But have they explained our radiation suspenders?


3 posted on 07/25/2013 6:15:00 PM PDT by cripplecreek (REMEMBER THE RIVER RAISIN!)
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To: smokingfrog

The earth itself is in a warp bubble and we can just take the planet anywhere we want in the universe if we can figure out the owners manual.


4 posted on 07/25/2013 6:16:40 PM PDT by cripplecreek (REMEMBER THE RIVER RAISIN!)
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To: smokingfrog; Tax-chick
Mystery of Earth's radiation belts solved


5 posted on 07/25/2013 6:17:56 PM PDT by Ezekiel (The Obama-nation began with the Inauguration of Desolation.)
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To: neverdem

But the mystery of the Suspenders still persists ...


6 posted on 07/25/2013 6:21:23 PM PDT by ClearCase_guy (21st century. I'm not a fan.)
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To: smokingfrog
Torus energy field.

http://cosmometry.net/the-torus---dynamic-flow-process

 photo WEB_Still_Galaxy_02_zps08224ed8.jpg

With this discovery, you will get crazy folks at the thrive movement and virtually every other alien encounter fan on the planet making crop circles in their backyards.

7 posted on 07/25/2013 6:23:33 PM PDT by Zeneta (No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn.)
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To: smokingfrog

I must add that this is a big part of the “New age movement”, which is really just Buddhism for westerners.

I first idea that we are all connected by this “energy field” and the second that we are all gods.


8 posted on 07/25/2013 6:29:27 PM PDT by Zeneta (No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn.)
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To: Ezekiel

Obama is trying to figerout hau to tax it!
One Alien Tax coming to your paycheck.


9 posted on 07/25/2013 6:34:09 PM PDT by Leo Carpathian (FReeeeepeesssssed)
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To: Zeneta

Admiral Harriman Nelson: “What’s that fire in the sky?”.....


10 posted on 07/25/2013 6:36:09 PM PDT by bobby.223 (Retired up in the snowy mountains of the American Redoubt and it's a GREAT life!)
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To: neverdem

My dad did not leave me much. However, he did have the propensity for being around or working with people and projects which later gained some fame. This gave me occasional opportunity to name drop, even if a bit vicariously. :-)

During WWII, he worked at John’s Hopkins Applied Physics Lab on the Proximity Fuse project. While there, he met & married my mom. I showed up two years after the war ended.

My mom used to talk about my dad bringing home his co-workers to have dinner with them. Among these were James Van Allen and Dr. J. Allen Hynek, who later headed Project Blue Book for the Air Force.

Project Blue Book was, of course, the Air Force official look into UFO’s.

Dr. James Van Allen is, of course, much better known.


11 posted on 07/25/2013 6:41:23 PM PDT by BwanaNdege ("To learn who rules over you simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize"- Voltaire)
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To: neverdem

Nice.

Now explain Michelle Obama’s Boob belts.


12 posted on 07/25/2013 6:42:54 PM PDT by Vendome (Don't take life so seriously, you won't live through it anyway)
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To: bobby.223

Exactly.


13 posted on 07/25/2013 6:43:26 PM PDT by BenLurkin (This is not a statement of fact. It is either opinion or satire; or both.)
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14 posted on 07/25/2013 6:43:43 PM PDT by RedMDer (When immigrants cannot or will not assimilate, its really just an invasion. Throw them out!)
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To: bobby.223

“I didn’t see the fire in the sky”

“but, there was smoke on the water”


15 posted on 07/25/2013 6:47:32 PM PDT by Zeneta (No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn.)
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To: Zeneta

Some stupid with a flare gun...


16 posted on 07/25/2013 6:48:06 PM PDT by dfwgator
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To: BwanaNdege

My brush with greatness was Jim McDivitt who did a lot of business with my grandfather after leaving NASA.


17 posted on 07/25/2013 6:57:21 PM PDT by cripplecreek (REMEMBER THE RIVER RAISIN!)
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To: neverdem

NASA’s Van Allen probes:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/rbsp/main/index.html#.UfHbOG38L5Q


18 posted on 07/25/2013 7:14:44 PM PDT by iowamark
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To: Zeneta

You might have. That line was from near the start of the 1961 movie, ‘Voyage To The Bottom Of the Sea’, (starring Frankie Avalon, Barbara Eden, Peter Lorre and Walter Pidgeon). The brand new nuclear powered ‘research’, (heh-heh, loaded with nuke missiles, some ‘research’ sub), submarine Seaview has just surfaced after 3 days below the Arctic Ice, out of all contact with the outside world, to discover that the sky is ‘on fire’. When radio contact is made to Wa. DC, Admiral Nelson asks “What’s that fire in the sky”. He is then told it that the Van Allen belt had exploded.


19 posted on 07/25/2013 7:18:07 PM PDT by bobby.223 (Retired up in the snowy mountains of the American Redoubt and it's a GREAT life!)
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To: El Gato; Ernest_at_the_Beach; Robert A. Cook, PE; lepton; LadyDoc; jb6; tiamat; PGalt; Dianna; ...
MRSA: Farming up trouble

Nano Masterpieces

Long-life lithium sulfide batteries

Artificial leaf in the shade but still growing

FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list. Anyone can post any unposted link as they see fit.

20 posted on 07/25/2013 7:23:18 PM PDT by neverdem (Register pressure cookers! /s)
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