NASA's Van Allen Probes Spot an Impenetrable Barrier in Space

http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/van-allen-probes-spot-impenetrable-barrier-in-space/

by jedp • 12 years ago

135 38 12 years ago

jedp• 12 years ago

The title is a bit hyperbolic. The article shows how the Van Allen belts constitute a "nearly impenetrable" barrier preventing "ultra-fast electrons" from approaching the earth.

dreamweapon• 12 years ago

Yeah -- from the sound of the title, you'd think they'd discovered this thing:

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Galactic_barrier

tjradcliffe• 12 years ago

In fairness, the article is almost as bad as the title. It isn't even clear at first that they are taking about belt electrons rather than cosmic-ray electrons, which have many orders of magnitude higher energy.

The gist of the article seems to be, "The sharpness of the outer edge of the inner Van Allen belt is due to scattering of high-energy belt electrons off cold plasma surrounding the Earth" but it's really difficult to tell.

pjungwir• 12 years ago

It's amazing how much they look like electron orbitals. . . . Sometimes its seems like the reason we see nature reuse the same patterns is not from any physical mechanism but simply because math only has so many "shapes." I am perpetually in awe at this mysterious order to our universe.

Also: if these belts block high-energy electrons, can they teach us to build a force field that does the same? And can that solve the problem of fast-moving spacecraft being destroyed by the first spec of dust they encounter? Or of radiation killing the crew?

What if the only way to protect life against cosmic radiation is to build a planet-sized spacecraft?

Another question due to my weak grasp of modern physics: to a fast-moving spacecraft, are all electrons "high energy"?

pbhjpbhj• 12 years ago

build a planet-sized spacecraft //

We have one of those already, just need to work on the propulsion and life-support systems.

twic2• 12 years ago

And we're back to the stories of Liu Cixin again:

http://www.pornokitsch.com/2012/07/underground-reading-the-w...

mturmon2• 12 years ago

You may already know this, but in your observation about "math having only so many shapes" has been explored in some depth. There is a wikipedia page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patterns_in_nature

but I first learned about it from the book, "Patterns in Nature", by Peter S. Stevens (http://www.amazon.com/Patterns-Nature-Peter-S-Stevens/dp/031...), which was recommended to me by a noted poet.

3rd3• 12 years ago

There is a similar, but less mathematical and pretty old book called Artforms of Nature by Ernst Haeckel (1904) [1]. It’s in the public domain.

[1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Kunstformen_der_Natur

davidw• 12 years ago

I'm glad that page linked to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanesco_broccoli

The first time I saw it in a store here in Italy I got all excited and started staring at it up close.

VLM• 12 years ago

to a fast-moving spacecraft, are all electrons "high energy"?

Define fast. Electrons get to relativistic-ish speeds in the hundred of kilovolts-ish range. If you look at the specs for a x-ray tube thats a pretty intense / hard to shield x-ray source, not like those wimpy tens of kilovolt xrays from a CRT that don't even make it thru the glass.

So if you're going fast enough for relativity to be an issue, smacking a stationary electron is going to hurt and be a pain to shield, so yeah, all electrons are high energy. On the other hand what we puny humans currently think is a fast spacecraft, is going to be a rounding error compared to solar winds and just random stuff out there, so in a different way, all the electrons that matter are high energy compared to our actual deployed slow spacecraft, sorta.

dredmorbius• 12 years ago

The observation of the similarity between electron orbitals and various astronomical phenomena is one that's made fairly frequently.

My first recollection was during a high-school session to a local university for a science and physics colloquium for high-school students, over a quarter century ago. We were seeing slides of steller objects, and one showed as I recall a galaxy with high-energy jets radiating from both poles. One of the bright kids in the group (ergo, not myself) noted the electron orbital similarity.

Perhaps it's the chagrin at not having noted that myself which has made me highly aware of the symmetry since. But yes, there's an economy of patterns in the Universe. At least at some levels.

marcosdumay• 12 years ago

It's a very simple shape. Things that rotate tend to have toroidal features. And the details are all different.

We know how to build a force field that does the same, it's a magnet. The problem is that it does not protect against neutron radiation.

blueprint3• 12 years ago

I wonder if I'll be attacked for saying this. Here goes. We always find these kinds of shapes because they are the shapes that appear through fluid mechanics. Space is a fluid, too. In a fluid, we have vortices (in the form of whirlpools, tornados, etc) because they allow material and energy to be moved much more efficiently than any of the other structures we don't tend to see in stable systems.

NeverEnough• 12 years ago

would you disagree with the idea that there are a lot of good ways of describing something, that are true for many cases but very wrong for others?

chriswarbo2• 12 years ago

In a fluid, we have vortices... because they allow material and energy to be moved much more efficiently than any of the other structures we don't tend to see in stable systems.

As a Physicist, I am wary of making such statements since they put the cart before the horse ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleology ). I'd be more comfortable saying "In a fluid, we have vortices... as a consequence of the movement of material and energy."

In your case I'm assuming it's just a turn of phrase, but there are some hypotheses which actually attribute abstract "goals" to nature, without providing any explanation in terms of mechanical processes; for example http://www.lawofmaximumentropyproduction.com

In constrast, Darwin explained the theory of evolution using the mechanical process of natural selection. The principle of least action can be explained either physically, using quantum interference (eg. in optics), or mathematically, due to the mixture of inductive steps with deductive ones.

In constrast, the existence of vortices in fluids because of their efficiency would be like claiming crater lakes can't exist because water flows downhill.

ajcarpy20052• 12 years ago

Well there is actually a very electrical and magnetic basis for many of the features and configurations we see in space and in star systems. There is a whole memmetic category heading known as Electric Universe, which although unfortunately contributed to by many crackpots, a very interesting and rational framework for understanding on at least a very basic level the 'why' and 'how' of what we observe in space. (why and how specific patterns or shapes are observed)

Here's a fantastic first part of a video series (long but very educational and interesting; not solid science but not devoid of facts either): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EPlyiW-xGI

ajcarpy20052• 12 years ago

If you downvoted I'm not angry but I would appreciate transparency about what you think about the role of electricity and magnetism in the Universe at large. I tried to distinguish my comment from naive ideology by cautioning that I am not comfortable with the level of scientific rigor used under the 'umbrella' of Electric Universe studies but that I find the cognitive paths they use to be on a track that probably leads to rigorous scientific experiments and provable/disprovable theories. I find it a good philosophical framework, far better than, say, Greek Astrology...

tfgg• 12 years ago

I'd urge anyone to read the wikipedia page [1] before seriously engaging with the "electric universe", the proposals of which, such as cosmic electrical currents being more important than gravity in galaxy structure (~35 mins into that video, just from scanning through), are not consistent with modern observations and are less effective than mainstream theories in explaining them.

The statement "Well there is actually a very electrical and magnetic basis for many of the features and configurations we see in space and in star systems" is highly controversial and pretty unsupported, beyond things like jets and planetary magnetic fields.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_cosmology

jaekwon• 12 years ago

An electron is just a miniature plaque with Carl Sagan's signature on it.

lifeisstillgood• 12 years ago

I find that the more we know about this planet that keeps us safe, a large moon to keep asteroids away and tectonics hot, a mass just enough to keep an atmosphere around us and a spinning iron core to provide "impenetrable barriers", the more I learn of this the less I think Fermi found a paradox and just that it's hard for life to stay alive in this universe.

JetSpiegel• 12 years ago

Life finds a way.

Balgair• 12 years ago

It's the day before turkey day, you don't deserve the negative links, even if it was a cheap comment, as you made me think of that ma's laugh: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lS9D6w1GzGY

Also, is laughter a conserved 'shape' in nature, and what is the shape space of nature anyways, is it restricted to the 4 dimensions we inhabit in a way?

hereonbusiness• 12 years ago

Well there's Venus and Mars, both planets could have been much like Earth except both somehow ended up without that impenetrable barrier they probably had billions of years ago.

Three possibly habitable planets in one solar system, 1 out of 3 still habitable even after 4+ billion years, that's not bad.

drew-r• 12 years ago

Space ship passes through it = not impenetrable

ZenoArrow• 12 years ago

Clearly it's possible to escape Earth orbit, but would point out that the Van Allen belts have been used by conspiracy theorists to 'prove' that the moon landings were faked.

kilroy123• 12 years ago

This certainly seems like something we need to duplicate for spaceships, to more safely travel to mars and beyond.

I don't know much about the dangers of these particles on the human body. I'm going to assume any environment different to the one on earth poses great risk.

graycat• 12 years ago

Impenetrable Barrier in Spac

Gee, then, how'd various spacecraft get through it?

Ah, now that I read the details, it's a "nearly impenetrable barrier" to electrons. Okay, now not so amazing! No need to call Captain Kirk!

Such titles are called "click bait" or some such, right?

atorralb• 12 years ago

glass sky theory anyone?

tomelders• 12 years ago

Moron here. So what are the ramifications of this? Does it inhibit our ability to observe the universe? Dare I ask, does this offer any protection from anything nasty the universe might send our way?

krmtl• 12 years ago

Here is a related article that discusses removing the Van Allen belts:

http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/astrophysics/hacking-the-...

carapace• 12 years ago

Electromagnetic aspects of the "Gaia" hypothesis?

NASA's Van Allen Probes Spot an Impenetrable Barrier in Space

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