[HN Gopher] Radiation belts detected around Earth after solar storm
___________________________________________________________________
Radiation belts detected around Earth after solar storm
Author : jandrewrogers
Score : 83 points
Date : 2025-02-07 16:46 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sciencealert.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sciencealert.com)
| ck2 wrote:
| vague memories of Starfish Prime
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfish_Prime#After_effects
|
| where they accidentally created a new radiation belt in orbit
|
| and destroyed some of the first commercial satellites
| MrGuts wrote:
| "Mysterious Radiation Belts Detected Around Earth After Epic
| Solar Storm"
|
| I'm sure there was a 1950's sci-fi movie based on this premise.
| jjulius wrote:
| This place can really be insufferable sometimes.
|
| Scientists: "Wow, this was new and exciting and we'd never seen
| it before! This surprised us and made us wonder!"
|
| This Thread: "HOW DARE THEY CALL THIS OUT-OF-THE-ORDINARY THING
| 'MYSTERIOUS'!!!!!"
| codr7 wrote:
| Pretending to know everything, and especially being right, is a
| pretty big thing around here.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| It's the problem with 3rd / 4th level articles, that is, 1st
| level is a scientific paper, 2nd is a press release, 3rd / 4th
| are the media and popular science outlets. It's how you get
| from some numbers / statistics representing a slight dimming in
| a distant star to artist's renditions of verdant blue/green
| exoplanets.
|
| But the scientific papers aren't interesting on their own, they
| need explanation first so people know what it entails, then
| entertainment so people get interested. Or in this case,
| provoke outrage so that they get people upset and reacting to
| it.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Papers are interesting, but usually much less accessible.
| There is nothing inherently wrong with the idea of scientific
| reporting. However, many publishers have historically gone
| overboard with sensationalism, which spurred a lot of knee-
| jerk reactionary sentiment.
|
| In this case, I don't think it is really warranted. I thought
| the article was about as straight forward as one could expect
| for an introduction of this length, and avoided
| sensationalism. The only hazard mentioned is that to
| satellites, which is mentioned as a concern on area of
| research in the original article (which they actually linked
| for once!).
| roymurdock wrote:
| Interesting, so the 2 new belts (fields) are closer than the 2
| stable existing belts (Van Allen Belts) that shield us from
| radiation.
|
| These fields could affect the launch and operation of satellites.
| Or maybe they will help shield us further? Or affect our
| atmosphere in some way? To be studied...
| beretguy wrote:
| Anton Petrov made a video about Van Allen Belts about 4 years ago
| where he also talks about a 3rd belt appearing during a solar
| storm:
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BpMeRWcIxNI
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I think this article is about a 4th
| cossatot wrote:
| I wonder how much the Van Allen radiation belts are a contributor
| to the Fermi paradox, i.e. how much they contributed to providing
| a suitable place for life to originate and flourish, and how rare
| they are.
|
| The belts themselves are an effect of Earth's magnetic field,
| which I believe is particularly strong because of flow within the
| Earth's liquid iron-nickel outer core. (I had long believed that
| the spinning of the inner core was the primary contributor but
| given a surface-level skim of the literature that doesn't seem to
| be the case; convection seems to be more of a driver.)
|
| I think perhaps many otherwise similar planets don't have a
| liquid iron core, so they may not have the strong radiation belts
| that shield life from the solar wind. Of course I am not sure
| what fraction of otherwise-similar planets have liquid iron
| cores, but Mars for example does not seem to. It is probably a
| function of the size of a planet (governing the pressure
| distribution in the interior), the ratio of iron to other
| elements, the temperature field (a function of the amount of
| radiogenic elements in the planet and its age), and perhaps other
| factors. Other planets may not be hot enough to have a liquid
| iron core at the right pressures, or be too massive (too much
| pressure) at the right temperatures, etc.
| dekhn wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that the belts are a requirement for some types
| of life to originate and survive. Along with Jupiter helping
| protect us, our location in the galaxy, etc.
| doctoboggan wrote:
| If abiogenesis occurred in the thermal vents deep under the
| ocean I believe that could have happened without the
| radiation protection as the water would be more than
| adequate.
| dekhn wrote:
| Sure, but small amounts of radiation are beneficial. And
| those early organisms would eventually ahve to move to the
| shallows and land and deal with all the masked radiation at
| some point. It's all speculation, we really have no idea
| whether it was vents-first or not.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I think that solar radiation isn't a direct danger to life, as
| it is quickly blocked by the surface of oceans and land. If an
| atmosphere turns out to be a major factor in the development of
| life, lack of a field could be a bigger impact. That said,
| atmospheric stripping like what happened to marks isnt sure
| bet. Venus has no internal Dynamo, but a massive atmosphere,
| despite 5X the solar radiation.
| jordanb wrote:
| Earth is the only rocky planet in the solar system with a
| magnetic core so that'd be 1/4 at least.
| dang wrote:
| [stub for offtopicness]
| porcoda wrote:
| I really wish sites would stop with the clickbait style
| headlines. "Mysterious" is unnecessary here since there isn't
| much mystery about this. If anything, this kind of wording
| gives non-experts and non-scientists the wrong message since
| mysterious often gets read as "scary" or "unexplainable", which
| is often misleading.
| 52-6F-62 wrote:
| This is a projection of your inner state onto the word and
| not the word itself. It truly is a mystery. Like most things.
| baxtr wrote:
| I wonder almost daily why anything at all exists. It's an
| absolute mystery.
|
| Why isn't there just void? So here we are on a tiny planet
| alone. Alone?
|
| How did we get here? Are we living in a simulation? Maybe
| we are in Sim Planet game for another entity?
|
| All of our existence is mystery.
| card_zero wrote:
| Being in a simulation only makes the question more
| complicated, in a "turtles all the way down" style.
| netsharc wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8mJr4c66bs
| allemagne wrote:
| In the context of a news headline the decision to use the
| word "mysterious" and "detected" obviously implies a
| different kind of significance than the inherent mystery in
| all things. Other comments in this thread already bring up
| science fiction movies and other radiation-related
| disasters, I don't think OP is that much out on a limb
| here.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I think that is projection too. Mysterious can mean
| exciting, unknown, and curious.
|
| Why does this bother people? it isn't like the article is
| inducing mass hysteria.
| card_zero wrote:
| The article itself vacillates.
|
| > we've seen this phenomenon before
|
| > I said, 'Wow, this is something really new'
|
| > it's unsurprising
|
| > Even so [...] what they saw surprised them.
|
| I mean that's nerdy scientists for you, they get so
| _into_ their thing it 's kind of disgusting. I watched a
| documentary about volcanos once, it had a husband and
| wife team, they were just enthusing endlessly about their
| particular volcano that they were studying and it really
| turned me off. This was about 20 years ago and as a
| result I still hate vulcanologists, they totally overdid
| the sales pitch.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I can only assume you are sarcastic about your hate for
| scientists that love their work.
| mock-possum wrote:
| Is it projection, or just a matter of media literacy?
|
| We know what the radiation belt is, where it is, and where
| it came from; so why exactly is this a 'mystery?'
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Great, so we should cancel all scientific research
| because everything is known. The universe exists: QED. no
| need to explain or understand phenomenon beyond them
| having a name
| szundi wrote:
| So true.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| [flagged]
| foxglacier wrote:
| It's a super common behavior on social media. Worrying
| about what the stupid people might think if they see
| something. It's always some hypothetical group of lower-
| thinking people that they worry about, even when there's no
| sign of them existing. I'd say it's sometimes just
| pretending to be concerned about harm to others to make
| their position seem more important and right, and sometimes
| a fear that other people might believe different (thus
| obviously wrong and even immoral) things to themselves.
| dang wrote:
| You broke the site guidelines badly in this thread, more
| than once. Not cool.
|
| We ban accounts that do this and we've warned you more than
| once before. I don't want to ban you, so if you'd please
| fix this, that would be good.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| pithanyChan wrote:
| exciting is the word you are looking for, porcoda. non-expert
| lurkas find the unexplainable as stimulating as skimming over
| the mysteries of SDF or speed reading through LSD & Samagon
| themed anti-communist feel good novels a lae Hesse (Vilnius
| Rome or something).
|
| Radiation? Radio! Antenas! Thpooky electro-magnetism at a
| distance? Is that a thing? Is there a chance?
|
| ( Sureley, you understand I'm only half joking here. )
| anigbrowl wrote:
| It's previously unseen and we don't fully understand it,
| that's good enough for me to call it mysterious. I don't
| really care what connotations others may or may not attach to
| the word.
| salynchnew wrote:
| While I agree and generally feel the same way, I think it is
| worth mentioning that the "war for attention" is an
| existential issue for most online publications these days.
| The clickbait headlines are used specifically because it
| marginally increases readership/views, without which the
| publication would probably cease to exist.
| psychoslave wrote:
| Definitely, I would however recommend that next time they
| would instead use something like "mysterious radiation of
| the forbidden belt clandestinely detected around censored
| earth after tremendous epic solar that some governments
| might try to hide, the 42th reason will surprise you"
| without what I am afraid that the entire staff is going to
| go through a major life crisis before they even had any
| child possibly contributing to a quick extinction of human
| species, warning, danger, how dare you not read the article
| yet?
| layer8 wrote:
| Then it must surely be more than just a marginal increase.
| layer8 wrote:
| "Epic" stood out more to me than "mysterious" in terms of
| low-brow clickbaitiness.
| dang wrote:
| Ok, we've made the title less mysterious (and less epic)
| above.
| hassleblad23 wrote:
| Nothing mysterious about it.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-02-07 23:00 UTC)