Earth is surrounded by a radio field caused by very low-frequency waves. This field pushes away the Van Allen Belts, a radiation swim-floaty that surrounds Earth’s middle. Van Allen radiation hinders and complicates spaceflight, magnetic instruments, and more.
Forget the Kármán line—there’s a human-made space barrier to wonder about, first observed by NASA in 2017. The mysterious zone of anthropogenic space weather is caused by specific kinds of radio waves that we’ve been blasting into the atmosphere for decades, but experts say the expanding band actually helps protect humankind from dangerous space radiation.
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ScienceAlert reports that NASA first observed this belt in 2012. The agency sends probes to explore different parts of our solar system, including the Van Allen Belts: a huge, torus-shaped area of radiation that surrounds Earth. The donut shape follows the equator, leaving the North and South Poles free.
A cross section of Van Allen radiation belts.
NASA/Public Domain
The Van Allen Belts are related to and affected by the magnetosphere induced by the nonstop bombardment of the sun’s radiation. They affect benign-seeming magnetic effects like the Northern Lights, as well as more destructive ones like magnetic storms.
People planning spaceflight through areas affected by the Van Allen Belts, for example, must develop radiation shielding to protect crew as well as equipment—and most spacecraft launch from as near to the equator as possible, right in the Van Allen zone.
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So, what’s our new protective barrier? The same probes that launched in 2012 to help us understand
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