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NASA Discovers Third Radiation Belt Circling Earth
An anonymous reader sends word that NASA scientists using the Relativistic Electron Proton Telescope (REPT) about the Van Allen Probes have discovered a third radiation belt surrounding Earth. Scientists have been aware of the Van Allen radiation belts since the 1950s, but it was thought that there were only two of them. The probes were sent up to simply map the belts in fine detail; the discovery of a third belt was a complete surprise. Deputy mission scientist Shri Kanekal said, "By the fifth day REPT was on, we could plot out our observations and watch the formation of a third radiation belt. We started wondering if there was something wrong with our instruments. We checked everything, but there was nothing wrong with them. The third belt persisted beautifully, day after day, week after week, for four weeks." Part of the reason they caught a glimpse of this belt was that they turned the REPT on early, so it would overlap with another probe that had reached end-of-life and was about to de-orbit. If they hadn't decided to do so, or if the REPT hadn't worked perfectly, we still might be in the dark about a third Van Allen belt.
Maybe he should trade one of those belts for a pair of suspenders?
Free Martian Whores!
I worked on this spaceship for ~3 years. Let me say that it's very gratifying that it found something, and especially that it found something nobody was expecting. I'm much relieved.
More proof that man never went to the moon.
We had a third belt and then we didn't... gamers are at fault.
Reminds me of one of my favorite movies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyage_to_the_Bottom_of_the_Sea
Yes, I know, the plot is typical 50's non-science (using a nuclear missile to amputate the Van Allen belts from earth because they caught fire....). But i still like it.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Was this 3rd belt caused by Fukashima or Global Warming?
Look how high up that belt is!
Considering we don't generally detonate nuclear bombs in orbit around the planet... I would say all of them.
We've got the Van Allen belt... what are the other two, Van Morrison and Van Johnson?
the one responsible for lightning is Van de Graaff
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The third belt has not always been there, nor is it there now. It was blasted away by a solar shock wave a few weeks after they noticed it. The guess is that a solar shock wave is what created it in the first place, too.
Everything is better with chainsaws.
I cast a vote for Van Halen
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
And even when we do, the radiation belt created doesn't last long. Five years in the case of the Starfish Prime artificial belt. Probably because the belt isn't caused by or reinforced by solar particle flux, so the trapped particles leak over time.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Unless I missed it, it's not clear from TFA which of the three belts shown in the map is the "new", intermittent belt.
I'm guessing it's the inner one (which I'd expect to decay from encounters with the very tenuous upper atmosphere). But I'd like to know for sure.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Not a "third belt" at all. A temporary "third concentration" within the Van Allen belt, yes. The lower concentration is blamed on cosmic ray neutron=>proton interactions, the upper concentration to atmospheric and solar electrons. The belt was already known to consist of some concentration of energetic particles from 250-20,000 km. Naturally that varies at various levels as incoming particles are pulled into the magnetosphere.
"You must try to forget all you have learned. You must begin to dream." -- Sherwood Anderson