NASA Discovers New Radiation Belt Around Earth

[Eugene]

Source: SPACE.com

NASA Discovers New Radiation Belt Around Earth

by Charles Q. Choi, SPACE.com Contributor
Date: 28 February 2013 Time: 02:01 PM ET

A ring of radiation previously unknown to science fleetingly surrounded Earth last year before being virtually annihilated by a powerful interplanetary shock wave, scientists say.

NASA's twin Van Allen space probes, which are studying the Earth's radiation belts, made the cosmic find. The surprising discovery — a new, albeit temporary, radiation belt around Earth — reveals how much remains unknown about outer space, even those regions closest to the planet, researchers added.

After humanity began exploring space, the first major find made there were the Van Allen radiation belts, zones of magnetically trapped, highly energetic charged particles first discovered in 1958.

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Read more: http://www.space.com/20004-earth-radiation-belt-discovery.html

[Permanut]

1. Okay, so this was last year..

When Herman Cain was preaching "blame yourself", Romney was advocating for Detroit to go bankrupt, Perry was spouting off about eliminating Executive departments he couldn't name, Bachmann was pontificating about how gays are part of Satan (but can be cured, of course), Paul was spewing about how Americans should want a "strong president, and Newty was blathering about "rebuilding America".

Could all that BS and hot air have affected the Earth's magnetosphere? Just wondering.

[Peace Patriot]

2. Lol! Could be.

I was thinking along similar lines about the cause--that it wasn't some random natural space event--but I was musing that it was the inadvertent effect of sentience beings (not us) maneuvering within our solar system for their own purposes and throwing the radiation at us but not meaning to (like getting in the wake of a bus and its exhaust fumes), OR it was a signaling effect or the wake of a signal, say, traversing our solar system, from one faraway place to another, OR part of a surveillance by others, of us and our doings and how we were coming along in our progress toward galactic membership.

I hadn't thought of Republicans. They could screw a lot of things up, even space. Imagine all that burst of toxic fumes being broadcast to the Universe. It's embarrassing!

It probably IS a natural space phenomenon but the human mind does meander freely inventing many possibilities. It's who we are. It's our glory, really. It's probably why we're still being considered for galactic membership, despite our giving our public airwaves over to dinosauric tripe-mongers. They find us entertaining--and they've probably been through many millennia of tripe-mongers themselves before they invented warp drive and so on, so they understand what we're going through, write it off as a "stage" and peruse our science fiction instead.

End of meander.

[Permanut]

3. Nice meander, Peace..

dinosauric tripe-mongers - perfect description. Chances are pretty good, according to Sagan, Hawking, et al, that we're not alone in the universe. I just watched "Killers From Space" earlier today, Peter Graves, 1951, and in that version the others are plotting to take over the Earth. No mention about what they would do with right wing wackos, but if they take over, I'm going to be making some suggestions.