An article just published in the journal “Nature” describes the discovery of a kind of barrier placed in the Van Allen belts, about 11,600 km (aboyt 7,200 miles) above the surface, which prevents very high speed and energy electrons from reaching the Earth. This discovery was made using the Van Allen space probes, launched in August 2012 precisely to study those belts.
The existence of the Van Allen belts has been known for decades but their characteristics are not yet well known. For this reason NASA invested heavily in the construction of two twin spacecraft able to work in an environment that over time damages electronic equipment.
Daniel Baker received a doctorate studying under James van Allen and in 2013, as a professor and director of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at the University of Colorado at Boulder, led a team that used the Van Allen probes in a research that resulted in the discovery of a barrier between the two van Allen belts.
This barrier appears on the inner border of the outer van Allen belt and blocks what are called killer electrons. Those are particles that strike the Earth’s magnetosphere at near speeds. Their energy is so high as to constitute a threat to astronauts and for electronics, especially during solar storms.
Daniel Baker compared this barrier to the deflector shields created by force fields in Star Trek to protect starships from alien weapons. This is an unexpected phenomenon that has puzzled researchers. Even Kanekal Shri, one of the scientists of the van Allen mission who works at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center stated that it’s something completely new.
It’s not clear what determined the existence of this barrier. Researchers have begun to evaluate various hypotheses but the analyzes of the data collected are just at the beginning. Now that the research was published other scientists are making their assessments.
The Van Allen probes keep on working so there will be many more data to be analyzed to try to understand the nature of this barrier. Now that this phenomenon was discovered, it may be examined by other scientists. The exchange of ideas that will follow will certainly be useful to understand the origin of this barrier that helps protect the Earth.
[ad name=”eBayUSUKAstronomy”]
