Mysterious Radiation Belts Detected Around Earth After Epic Solar Storm
24 comments
·February 7, 2025cossatot
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.
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.
null
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.
s1artibartfast
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.
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.
card_zero
Being in a simulation only makes the question more complicated, in a "turtles all the way down" style.
szundi
So true.
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?’
s1artibartfast
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
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. )
s1artibartfast
seems like compulsive empathizing and unnecessary third party championship. I'm sure you are exceptionally smart to see through the title, but where are all of these hypothetical idiots who are scared by it.
Compulsive empathizer – Someone who overemphasizes potential harm to hypothetical people, sometimes to the point of obsession.
Third-party champion – A person who seems to always bring up hypothetical third parties who are allegedly affected by an issue, often in a way that feels exaggerated or unnecessary.
thuuuomas
I’m sure you’re extremely smart to see thru the longhoused BS, but your jargon is so tedious, your unprompted selfishness so juvenile.
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:
jjulius
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'!!!!!"
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.
codr7
Pretending to know everything, and especially being right, is a pretty big thing around here.
hassleblad23
Nothing mysterious about it.
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.
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
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.