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Humans Accidentally Made a Space Cocoon For Ourselves Out of Radio Waves (vice.com)

An anonymous reader shares a Motherboard article: Humans have accidentally created a protective bubble around Earth by using very low frequency (VLF) radio transmissions to contact submarines in the ocean. It sounds nuts, but according to recent research published in Space Science Reviews, underwater communication through VLF channels has an outer space dimension. This video explainer, released by NASA on Wednesday, visualizes how radio waves wafting into space interact with the particles surrounding Earth, and influence their motion. Satellites in certain high-altitude orbits, such as NASA's particle-watching Van Allen Probes, have observed these VLF ripples creating an 'impenetrable boundary,' a phrase coined by study co-author Dan Baker, director of the University of Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics. This doesn't mean impenetrable to spacecraft or asteroids, per se, but rather to potentially harmful particle showers created by turbulent space weather.

11 of 137 comments (clear)

  1. This might make Mars habitation more feasible. by hey! · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If you can get people there without the proteins in their brain being denatured by radiation, maybe you could keep them that way for extended periods without their brains turning into scrambled eggs.

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    1. Re:This might make Mars habitation more feasible. by Baron_Yam · · Score: 4, Informative

      1) Don't worry about the core, it'll last. It's currently at ~5000K and will be at ~4950K in a billion years... which is about 300M years after the surface will be baked sterile by the Sun.

      2) Even so... it would take a LONG time for the solar wind to strip our atmosphere away. And in fact, it turns out we were wrong about the effect of the Earth's magnetic field; it is actually helping the solar wind heat and strip the atmosphere. At current depletion rates, it's estimated to be good for another 4 billion years or so. That's more than 3 billion years after the planet is baked and around the time it'll be engulfed by the Sun.

      We really don't need to worry about the core, its magnetic field, or the density of the planetary atmosphere.

  2. Re:Beginning of shield technology? by Oswald+McWeany · · Score: 5, Informative

    Perhaps if we can emit VLF radiation at very high frequency

    If we emit Very Low Frequency radiation at very high frequency it won't be very low frequency any more.

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    "That's the way to do it" - Punch
  3. Re: Interesting... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Has nothing to do with monoliths. Has all to do with HAARP and geoengineering in collusion with the Russians who shared their chemtrail technology originally with the Reagan administration and now with TRUMP. TRUMP and the Russians are wholly owned by Reptilian Zionist Jews who want to eradicate the surface of the earth of "space pork," aka humans possessed by Mohammed promising 1024 virgins (joke's on Slashdot), Mohammed actually being a yerk slug and mind control virus created by Vindoor and delivered by his moon pod to paralyze us all.

  4. Re:Or anyone who's forgotten their wife's birthday by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Well since the frequency of your wife's birthday is around 1/31536000 Hz, you can always say you rounded that event to zero, which means that while you never tell her "happy birthday" it also means she never ages.

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  5. Re:Can it help on Mars and moon? by Falos · · Score: 4, Informative

    Peeked at TFA, sounds like it amplifies an existing Van Allen belt. Probably doesn't work surgically. Probably impossible to set up a belt on other planets with known tech, but I don't know belts and maybe a mild one can be synthesized, then amplified. I imagine the scale/distribution of radio emitters required isn't too impossible since we did it accidentally.

  6. Re:Beginning of shield technology? by nine-times · · Score: 5, Funny

    Perhaps if we can emit VLF radiation at very high frequency

    If we emit Very Low Frequency radiation at very high frequency it won't be very low frequency any more.

    Hmmm... Ok. So we can't increase the frequency, but what if we just took this Very Low Frequency radiation and shortened the wavelength?

  7. Re:Interesting... by msauve · · Score: 5, Funny

    "Space whales?"

    Yes, that, and a bowl of petunias.

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  8. Re:Beginning of shield technology? by Megol · · Score: 5, Funny

    Could we modulate the polarity?

  9. Very Large Transmitter by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So, basically (and unwittingly), we're using the Earths' own natural magnetic field as a carrier wave, and our VLF emissions are modulating it? Cool.
    Makes me wonder if, now knowing this, we could engineer the effect to, say, mitigate the effects of solar flares on our various technologies?

  10. No Star Trek reference yet? by Solandri · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Basically, we've figured out how to make a rudimentary deflector shield.