01-03-2013, 11:04 AM
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NASA Update
NASA Update.
Van Allen Probes Discover a New Radiation Belt
Earth's radiation belts were one of the first discoveries of the Space Age.
Back in the 1950s when the radiation belts were discovered, they had little effect on ordinary people.
James Van Allen discovered them during the 1958 launch of the first successful U.S. satellite.
Subsequent missions have observed parts of the belts, but what causes the dynamic variation in the region has remained something of a mystery.
Two nearly identical spacecraft launched in August 2012 and with only six months in operation, may well be rewriting science textbooks.
They have revealed a previously unknown third radiation belt around Earth.
The probes observed and studied these gigantic radiation belts surrounding our planet, which can swell dramatically in response to incoming energy from the sun, engulfing satellites and spacecraft and creating potential threats to manned space flight.
Today the radiation belts are crucial to our high-tech society. Hundreds of satellites used for everything from weather prediction to GPS to television routinely skim the belts, subjecting themselves to energetic particles that can damage solar panels and short-circuit sensitive electronics. During geomagnetic storms when the belts are swollen by solar activity, whole fleets of satellites can be engulfed, imperiling the technological underpinnings of daily life on the planet below. The Van Allen Probes directly address these down-to-Earth problems
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Click on this link
http://tinyurl.com/agj85r6
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01-03-2013, 12:26 PM
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Re: NASA Update
Very interesting post but does highlight something that I bang on about: people should never give utter belief to scientific claims because what is known as 'fact' today, can change when new 'facts' appear tomorrow (and most scientists think that way too).Was more ever said about the new dimension that was discovered not long ago?
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