Radiation belts detected around Earth after solar storm
64 comments
·February 7, 2025cossatot
groos
The composition of a planet's atmosphere has to do with the RMS velocity of gas molecules at a given planetary temperature. When this velocity exceeds the escape velocity of the planet, that gas is lost to space.
But there is one more factor. In the absence of a magnetic field, gas molecules can dissociate from being hit with the particles from the solar wind. E.g., water can dissociate into oxygen and hydrogen, and hydrogen having a relatively high RMS velocity readily leaks out to space. The remaining oxygen is too reactive to remain and then forms carbonates in rocks and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This is, from what I read, the explanation for the atmospheres of both Mars and Venus, which have only a small to non-existent magnetic field.
So yes, a magnetic field seems to be essential to holding a life-friendly atmosphere.
s1artibartfast
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.
perihelions
I've read that the relative contribution of planetary magnetic fields is overstated relative to atmospheres. The thickness of Earth's is the same mass as a 10 meter-high column of liquid water; not much radiation gets through that much shielding, magnetic field or no. (I think it's solely muons?)
dekhn
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
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
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.
jordanb
Earth is the only rocky planet in the solar system with a magnetic core so that'd be 1/4 at least.
roymurdock
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
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:
s1artibartfast
I think this article is about a 4th
ck2
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
"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.
gregwebs
A reason given for the dramatic increase in solar storm effects on Earth is that the Earth’s magnetic field is weakening. This is due to the current geomagnetic excursion where the location of the geomagnetic poles is changing.
sieste
I wonder if the spatial distribution of intensity from radiation belts correlate with "cancer clusters". Even if the effect is tiny you might be able to see it in the population.
aussieguy1234
I was out that night to capture the Aurora mentioned in the article, captured this time-lapse of the action: https://bsky.app/profile/robbiecahill.bsky.social/post/3lbt5...
dang
[stub for offtopicness]
hassleblad23
Nothing mysterious about it.
porcoda
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.
dang
Ok, we've made the title less mysterious (and less epic) above.
anigbrowl
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.
layer8
“Epic” stood out more to me than “mysterious” in terms of low-brow clickbaitiness.
null
pithanyChan
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 â læ Hesse (Vilnius Romé 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. )
salynchnew
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.
layer8
Then it must surely be more than just a marginal increase.
psychoslave
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?
s1artibartfast
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dang
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.
foxglacier
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.
thuuuomas
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52-6F-62
This is a projection of your inner state onto the word and not the word itself. It truly is a mystery. Like most things.
allemagne
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.
baxtr
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.
mock-possum
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?’
szundi
So true.
jjulius
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Cthulhu_
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
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!).
codr7
Pretending to know everything, and especially being right, is a pretty big thing around here.
IAmGraydon
I assure you that scientists did not use the word “mysterious”. The site did to get more people to click. The people of HN really dislike it when a site treats them like gullible idiots.
jjulius
Yeah, I know they didn't, which is why I didn't use the word in my own quotes. My point was that seizing on "mysterious" is stupid. Scientists found something new to them and were fascinated. "Mysterious" might not be the most perfectly cromulent word for this situation, but it's close enough with regards to conveying their awe.
Discussing what was discovered is a far more interesting conversation that yet another rant about how some word in a headline feels like clickbait to someone. For a site that prides itself on fostering quality discussion, it surprises me that this sort of perspective is downvoted.
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.