A 60-year-old mystery regarding the source of some energetic and potentially damaging particles in Earth's radiation belts is now solved using data from a shoebox-sized satellite built and operated by University of Colorado ...
Space Exploration
Dec 13, 2017
0
954
The heliosphere—made of solar wind, solar transients, and the interplanetary magnetic field—acts as our solar system's personal shield, protecting the planets from galactic cosmic rays. These extremely energetic particles ...
Astronomy
Mar 29, 2024
6
1007
April 17, 2021, was a day like any other day on the sun, until a brilliant flash erupted and an enormous cloud of solar material billowed away from our star. Such outbursts from the sun are not unusual, but this one was unusually ...
Astronomy
Mar 4, 2024
0
392
Scientists studying particle collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC)—a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science user facility for nuclear physics research at DOE's Brookhaven National Laboratory—have ...
Optics & Photonics
Jul 29, 2021
103
794
On November 26, 2011, the Mars Science Laboratory began a 253-day, 560-million-kilometer journey to deliver the Curiosity rover to the Red Planet. En route, the Southwest Research Institute-led Radiation Assessment Detector ...
Space Exploration
May 30, 2013
18
0
If you still have your solar viewing glasses from the eclipse, now is a good time to slap them on and look up at the sun. You'll see two big dark areas visible on our star. These massive sunspots are regions of intense and ...
Space Exploration
Sep 8, 2017
14
281
A key issue for next-generation fusion reactors is the possible impact of many unstable Alfvén eigenmodes, wave-like disturbances produced by the fusion reactions that ripple through the plasma in doughnut-shaped fusion ...
Plasma Physics
Sep 12, 2017
6
651
Since the discovery of the Van Allen radiation belts in 1958, space scientists have believed these belts encircling the Earth consist of two doughnut-shaped rings of highly charged particles—an inner ring of high-energy ...
General Physics
Sep 22, 2013
29
0
(Phys.org) —The origin of cosmic rays in the universe has confounded scientists for decades. But a study by researchers using data from the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole reveals new information that may ...
General Physics
Aug 30, 2013
3
0
(Phys.org)—The vast edges of our solar system—the boundary at the edge of our heliosphere where material streaming out from the sun interacts with the galactic material—is essentially invisible. It emits no light and ...
Space Exploration
Feb 5, 2013
5
0
