Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / The mysterious sources of the Van Allen radiation belts

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The mysterious sources of the Van Allen radiation belts · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:08
Speaker 1: Hey, Jorgey, did you know that we have a planetary
0:11
Speaker 1: defense system? Nice? Does it involve giant lasers? Not that
0:16
Speaker 1: I'm aware of, And how can it work? Well, this
0:18
Speaker 1: is them actually predated the development of lasers by billions
0:22
Speaker 1: of years, and it's actually totally natural or nice? Does
0:25
Speaker 1: that mean it's organic or vegan vegan lasers? Absolutely? No
0:30
Speaker 1: animals were hurt. But it's actually not all good. Now
0:34
Speaker 1: you have me worried. Yeah, it turns out there's a
0:36
Speaker 1: big hole in our planetary defense system. Really, I bet
0:40
Speaker 1: it's our fault. Was it caused by the lasers? No? Actually,
0:45
Speaker 1: the whole is also natural, and it has a really
0:48
Speaker 1: cool name. What's it called. It's called the South Atlantic Anomaly.
1:08
Speaker 1: Hi am or hand a cartoonists and the creator of
1:10
Speaker 1: PhD comics. I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and I'm
1:14
Speaker 1: actually not in favor of giant planetary lasers. What do
1:18
Speaker 1: you mean? How can you be anti giant lasers? Aren't
1:22
Speaker 1: all lasers good or at least fun to shoot? Exactly,
1:25
Speaker 1: a giant planetary laser that you build in the first
1:28
Speaker 1: act must be pointed at some planet by Act three.
1:32
Speaker 1: Just in the science Ficing movie you're writing it is,
1:37
Speaker 1: but it's also true. You know, you developed some massive
1:39
Speaker 1: laser cable of defending the Earth. That thing will eventually
1:42
Speaker 1: get pointed at some place on the Earth. Well, um,
1:47
Speaker 1: I mean, if you build it on Earth, it's kind
1:49
Speaker 1: of hard to point it at ourselves. Supervillains will find
1:53
Speaker 1: a way. I see. I guess the ads just see
1:56
Speaker 1: the giant mirror and then we're toasted exactly exactly. That
2:00
Speaker 1: wasn't such a great idea after all. Yeah. Well. Of
2:03
Speaker 1: their podcast, Daniel and Jorge explained the Universe, a production
2:06
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio, in which we don't worry so
2:08
Speaker 1: much about zapping aliens with lasers, but instead we like
2:11
Speaker 1: to think about all the mysteries of the universe, all
2:14
Speaker 1: the things that are deep out there, misunderstood, not understood,
2:18
Speaker 1: that are currently being investigated by scientists, and also the
2:21
Speaker 1: things that are nearby, the things right around us that
2:24
Speaker 1: we are still probing. Yeah, because there is a lot
2:26
Speaker 1: of stuff out there in the universe. In fact, the
2:28
Speaker 1: whole universe filled with stuff, and some of it is
2:31
Speaker 1: pretty amazing and incredible to learn about and to discover,
2:34
Speaker 1: but some of it can be kind of harmful. It
2:36
Speaker 1: certainly can be. And there's this consistent story that every
2:40
Speaker 1: time we do something new to explore space, send up
2:43
Speaker 1: a new satellite, build a new kind of telescope, we
2:45
Speaker 1: see something totally unexpected, something that makes scientists go, what
2:49
Speaker 1: are you sure? Did you check your calibrations? And these
2:53
Speaker 1: are wonderful opportunities to learn how the universe works. Every
2:56
Speaker 1: time we get surprised, there's an opportunity to learn something new.
2:59
Speaker 1: So what hap is your movie, Daniel to the scientistico,
3:02
Speaker 1: What that needs more calibration shift DF filters on it? Yeah, exactly.
3:07
Speaker 1: You know the story. Some grads didn't find something weird,
3:09
Speaker 1: his professor doesn't believe him and disregards it, and that
3:13
Speaker 1: ends up being the downfall of humanity. And then somehow
3:16
Speaker 1: the handsome physics professor ends up saving the world wearing
3:20
Speaker 1: a white lab coat. It's the worst movie ever pressing
3:23
Speaker 1: the laser bud, accidentally leaning on the laser button. But yeah,
3:26
Speaker 1: it sometimes seems like we are just as rock floating
3:28
Speaker 1: out in space, and there's a lot of stuff that
3:31
Speaker 1: can happen out there, you know, asteroids or solar winds.
3:35
Speaker 1: There's a lot of stuff sort of coming to get us. Yeah,
3:38
Speaker 1: when you look out into space and you see all
3:39
Speaker 1: those stars. It seems amazing that you can see so
3:42
Speaker 1: far that we can probe the distant depths of the
3:45
Speaker 1: universe and ask questions about what happened billions of years
3:48
Speaker 1: ago in light years away. But what you're looking through
3:51
Speaker 1: is not actually empty. The space between us and those stars,
3:55
Speaker 1: between us and those explosions is not empty. It's full
3:57
Speaker 1: of incredible interactive stuff, and there's a lot to learn
4:01
Speaker 1: just by looking at the things right around our own planet. Yeah,
4:05
Speaker 1: we're live in a kind of busy neighborhood, right, I mean,
4:08
Speaker 1: it's not apparent to the eye, but there is a
4:10
Speaker 1: lot of stuff swirling around us. Exactly. Most of the
4:13
Speaker 1: universe is actually invisible. There are neutrinos, there's dark matter,
4:17
Speaker 1: there's all sorts of stuff all around you that you
4:20
Speaker 1: cannot see. So remember, you were only seeing a little
4:23
Speaker 1: slice of the universe, the part that radiates in the
4:25
Speaker 1: visible spectrum that you can detect. Most of the universe
4:29
Speaker 1: is invisible to you. But science has built new kinds
4:32
Speaker 1: of eyeballs, new ways to explore the universe and to
4:34
Speaker 1: reveal what's actually happening. And it turns out that right
4:38
Speaker 1: around our planet. There's some really amazing things swooshing and swirling.
4:42
Speaker 1: So to the on the podcast, we'll be asking the question,
4:50
Speaker 1: what are the Van Allen radiation belts? Now, Daniel? Are these?
4:55
Speaker 1: Is this like a heavy metal rock band? Is in
4:57
Speaker 1: Van Allen? Uh? The name for a rock band van Halen?
5:01
Speaker 1: I'm thinking pen Halien. It's a crossover between heavy metal
5:04
Speaker 1: and karate? Does it involve heavy metals? If you go
5:07
Speaker 1: beyond black belt in karate, then you get like a
5:09
Speaker 1: uranium belt or plutonium belt, and so yes, those would
5:13
Speaker 1: be heavy metal radiation belts. Oh man, we smashed heavy
5:18
Speaker 1: metal and karate for no good reason. Really, that's right.
5:21
Speaker 1: And then you make a band because these are radiation belts.
5:23
Speaker 1: They're not even made out of metal, but those are
5:25
Speaker 1: radioactive metals, you know. But anyway, then you get together
5:28
Speaker 1: with your friends and you have crazy long hair and
5:30
Speaker 1: dance around in leotards, and yes, you can be a
5:33
Speaker 1: heavy metal but yeah. So, apparently there's a lot of
5:36
Speaker 1: stuff going out there in space, especially right around us,
5:40
Speaker 1: and some of this stuff is called the Van Allen
5:42
Speaker 1: radiation belt. So we were wondering how many people out
5:45
Speaker 1: there knew what this was and what their main out
5:49
Speaker 1: that's right, So, as usual, I asked for volunteers on
5:52
Speaker 1: the internet to speculate without any background information about the
5:56
Speaker 1: next set of questions for the podcast. And if you'd
5:58
Speaker 1: like to volunteer and here our own speculation on the podcast,
6:01
Speaker 1: please write to us two questions at Daniel and Jorge
6:04
Speaker 1: dot com. I'm not sure it sounds like something that
6:07
Speaker 1: a superhero would wear when he wants to irradiate the
6:09
Speaker 1: bad guy. Man. If you don't ask me about the
6:12
Speaker 1: Van Halen and their belts, probably I could tell you something,
6:16
Speaker 1: But at this moment, I don't know about Van Allen.
6:19
Speaker 1: I vaguely remember this as being like a zone just
6:24
Speaker 1: outside of the planet that's like a zone of energized
6:29
Speaker 1: particles that are kind of held in place by I
6:33
Speaker 1: don't know, the planet's gravitational pool, magnetic pools, something like that,
6:39
Speaker 1: the charge particles from solar winds that are sort of
6:43
Speaker 1: captured in giant expanding halos around the Earth, something like that,
6:49
Speaker 1: or two giant ears sort of mouse ears around the Earth.
6:54
Speaker 1: But I don't know what they do or why they're captured,
6:58
Speaker 1: or what effects they have. It is a ring of
7:00
Speaker 1: radiation somewhere in space around Earth, maybe between Venus or
7:06
Speaker 1: between Mars and Earth, where there's just an intense amount
7:09
Speaker 1: of radiation that would be very uninhabitable. Yeah, even if
7:15
Speaker 1: we had to pass through it, it would cause a
7:18
Speaker 1: lot of damage to electronics or to anyone inside a ship.
7:24
Speaker 1: All right, it's a pretty good guesses. Somebody did they
7:28
Speaker 1: related to the late grade, and I'm awesome. Eddie van Halen,
7:31
Speaker 1: that's right, Eddie van Halen, one of the greatest rock
7:34
Speaker 1: and roll guitarists of all time who recently passed away. Yeah,
7:37
Speaker 1: but not everyone seemed to know what it is. Didn't
7:40
Speaker 1: ring a lot of bells for people. Nobody did. Sound
7:43
Speaker 1: like somebody out there has a movie they want to
7:45
Speaker 1: pitch a superhero wearing radiation belts to a radiate the
7:49
Speaker 1: bad guys. Somebody, quote unquote, that's totally not me. A
7:55
Speaker 1: lot like you. You think I would interview myself and
7:58
Speaker 1: then serve my own ideas in these interviews. That's a
8:01
Speaker 1: genius idea. I can't believe I didn't have. Actually, I
8:04
Speaker 1: know you interview your family all the time. I can
8:06
Speaker 1: recognize their voices now, all right, Well, I hadn't had
8:09
Speaker 1: the idea but now, at some point in the future,
8:11
Speaker 1: I will insert myself doing a false accent into one
8:14
Speaker 1: of these, and I'm gonna wait to see if you
8:15
Speaker 1: spot well. Either way, it's a great idea for a
8:17
Speaker 1: sequel for your current science fiction novel. So yeah, So
8:21
Speaker 1: I'm guessing they have something to do with radiation or
8:23
Speaker 1: particles or electrons and pronouns floating out in space, maybe
8:27
Speaker 1: in a circular way, to call it a belt. So, Daniel,
8:31
Speaker 1: what are the Van Allen radiation belts? So exactly as
8:34
Speaker 1: you say, these are huge belts of radioactive particle, not
8:38
Speaker 1: belts around me or around your waist, but around the Earth.
8:41
Speaker 1: So the Earth is spinning and then also spinning around
8:43
Speaker 1: the Earth. Are all these charged particles that are zooming
8:46
Speaker 1: around very high speeds in these well defined regions, these belts,
8:51
Speaker 1: and there's more than one of them. Now, are they
8:54
Speaker 1: going in a circle or are they just hanging out
8:57
Speaker 1: in the form of this circle. Now, they're definitely moving,
9:00
Speaker 1: and they are more in the shape of a donut
9:02
Speaker 1: because they're whizzing around the Earth and they're sort of
9:05
Speaker 1: organized more heavily near the equator. These are sort of
9:09
Speaker 1: amazing because they were a total surprise when they were discovered,
9:12
Speaker 1: and they were one of the first discoveries of the
9:15
Speaker 1: space age. You know, after Sputnik came out, the US
9:18
Speaker 1: was racing and gets stuff up there and send something
9:21
Speaker 1: into space. And it was very primitive in the fifties.
9:24
Speaker 1: We were just sort of like shooting rockets in the
9:25
Speaker 1: space with little devices on them. And the guy Van
9:29
Speaker 1: Allen decided to send up basically a Geiger count and say, like,
9:32
Speaker 1: how much radiation is there in space? And so this
9:35
Speaker 1: was they sent up a satellite like it was a
9:37
Speaker 1: satellite or just a rocket that went up and down.
9:40
Speaker 1: It was a satellite, so it would orbit the Earth
9:42
Speaker 1: and collect a bunch of data over lots of orbits,
9:45
Speaker 1: and on board was a Geiger counter and a tape
9:48
Speaker 1: recorder and the data got beamed down to the Earth
9:51
Speaker 1: using a couple of antennas. But nobody expected there to
9:54
Speaker 1: be much radiation. They thought, you know, space is mostly empty.
9:56
Speaker 1: We're gonna send this up here and we're gonna see
9:59
Speaker 1: the radiation from ground decreasing gradually as it goes up.
10:03
Speaker 1: But instead what they saw was that when you go
10:05
Speaker 1: out into space, there's an incredible amount of radiation. This
10:08
Speaker 1: is the first time people understood that space was basically radioactive.
10:12
Speaker 1: Oh man, and so, but it couldn't have gone up
10:15
Speaker 1: that far, right, So this belt is that close to
10:19
Speaker 1: the Earth. The belt is pretty close to the Earth,
10:21
Speaker 1: and so it's broken up into two main belts. There's
10:24
Speaker 1: the inner Belt and then there's the outer Belt. And
10:27
Speaker 1: the inner belt is not that far above the Earth's surface.
10:29
Speaker 1: It's like one fifth of the radius of the Earth
10:32
Speaker 1: above the Earth's surface, so you don't have to go
10:34
Speaker 1: that high up. Yeah, that is pretty close. It's pretty close,
10:39
Speaker 1: and it stretches out about twice the radius of the Earth,
10:41
Speaker 1: so it's point to to Earth radio. That's the inner Belt. Now,
10:46
Speaker 1: is this belt sort of like near the equator or
10:48
Speaker 1: is it more like an over the shoulder strap or
10:51
Speaker 1: is it like a halo. It's like a really big
10:54
Speaker 1: donut about the same height as the Earth, So there's
10:57
Speaker 1: not very much over the poles, but there's a lot
10:59
Speaker 1: over the equition. It's like if you put the Earth
11:01
Speaker 1: inside of a donut and it just barely fits in
11:03
Speaker 1: the hole. Yeah, exactly. The Earth is sitting in a
11:06
Speaker 1: donut hole of radiation which is whizzing around the Earth
11:09
Speaker 1: at very high speeds and high intensity, and so there's
11:12
Speaker 1: this inner belt, and then weirdly there's a gap, and
11:16
Speaker 1: then there's an outer belt. So there's two belts with
11:19
Speaker 1: like this gap in between them. It's a jelly filled donut.
11:23
Speaker 1: It's like a donut with an extra hole in it.
11:25
Speaker 1: It's like a donut with a donut inside of it
11:27
Speaker 1: and an extra hole inside of that. It's like the
11:29
Speaker 1: ur Duccan of pastries, oh man, And it has radiation
11:33
Speaker 1: and it will kill you if you eat it exactly.
11:35
Speaker 1: And it plays heavy metal music. And so there's this
11:39
Speaker 1: inner belt, and then there's the outer belt, and sometimes
11:43
Speaker 1: occasionally there's a very short lived third belt that lives
11:46
Speaker 1: between that. What what you means short lived, like it's uh,
11:50
Speaker 1: comes on and off, comes on and off, like you'll
11:52
Speaker 1: get it. It'll hang out for like a month or so,
11:54
Speaker 1: and then it will dissipate. The inner belt and the
11:57
Speaker 1: outer belt are pretty stable, the inner belt more stable
11:59
Speaker 1: than outer belt. But this third one comes occasionally and
12:02
Speaker 1: then disappears. And so it's been a bit of a
12:05
Speaker 1: mystery for like the last sixty years. What's making these belts?
12:09
Speaker 1: Why do they come and go sometimes? Why is there
12:12
Speaker 1: a gap in between them, and only recently NASA has
12:14
Speaker 1: been sending up satellites to probe these things and to
12:17
Speaker 1: get some more definitive data, which has led to some
12:19
Speaker 1: pretty interesting answers about what's making these belts, where these
12:22
Speaker 1: particles come from, why they have the weird shapes that
12:25
Speaker 1: they do, And we have a pretty well mapped like
12:28
Speaker 1: we're pretty sure it's a donut shape. What I guess
12:31
Speaker 1: what I mean is like you know, you see it
12:32
Speaker 1: more if you launch a rocket from the equator than
12:34
Speaker 1: if you launch a rocket from the North Pole. Yeah,
12:37
Speaker 1: we have a pretty well mapped now. NASA sent out
12:39
Speaker 1: probes in the early Van Allen probes to map these
12:43
Speaker 1: things and get a lot of data, and they found
12:45
Speaker 1: some amazing things like there's this gap between them, and
12:48
Speaker 1: the gap between them is pretty sharp, like the outer
12:51
Speaker 1: belt starts at sort of like a wall. Now when
12:54
Speaker 1: NASA report described it, like the particles and the outer
12:56
Speaker 1: belt look like they're being repelled by a sheet of glass,
13:00
Speaker 1: like a very well defined edge to the inner side
13:03
Speaker 1: of this outer built thing. And these particles that are
13:07
Speaker 1: sort of swirling around like a carousel or are they
13:10
Speaker 1: like I don't know, going around in circles within the doughnut,
13:14
Speaker 1: they are swirling around like all around the Earth or
13:16
Speaker 1: just spinning in place. They are going all around the Earth,
13:18
Speaker 1: so there's sort of like in orbit around the Earth.
13:21
Speaker 1: But the force that's holding them there, of course is
13:23
Speaker 1: not gravity, because gravity is way too weak to hang
13:26
Speaker 1: onto a particle. But yeah, they're all going all the
13:28
Speaker 1: way around the Earth, zooming around at really high speeds. Well,
13:32
Speaker 1: and now, are we the only planet that has them
13:34
Speaker 1: or do we see them on other planets or other
13:37
Speaker 1: things in space? We see them in other planets. Jupiter,
13:39
Speaker 1: for example, has really massive radiation belts, and sort of Saturn,
13:43
Speaker 1: and basically every planet that has any kind of stable
13:46
Speaker 1: magnetic field will have these kinds of particles. Interestingly, the
13:50
Speaker 1: Sun doesn't have radiation belt, mostly because it's magnetic field
13:54
Speaker 1: flips too often. It's got this crazy eleven year cycle
13:58
Speaker 1: where the magnetic field the north and Stuck pole flip
14:01
Speaker 1: every eleven years. And as we'll talk about in a minute,
14:04
Speaker 1: it's really the magnetic field of a planet that makes
14:07
Speaker 1: these belts and creates their structure. And so that's why
14:10
Speaker 1: the Sun doesn't have one. But all the big planets
14:12
Speaker 1: with stable magnetic fields do. Yeah, I figured it had
14:14
Speaker 1: something to do with the magnetic field. But so we
14:18
Speaker 1: can see them in other planets do like, but how
14:20
Speaker 1: but they're invisible. They are, I mean, these are particles,
14:23
Speaker 1: and so you don't see them with the naked eye,
14:25
Speaker 1: but if you're clever, you can detect them. And these
14:27
Speaker 1: particles do occasionally radiate, and so if you look for
14:29
Speaker 1: them carefully, you can certainly see them. And we send
14:32
Speaker 1: probes to those planets. And so I've seen, for example,
14:34
Speaker 1: maps of the radiation belts around Jupiter, and it looks similar.
14:38
Speaker 1: It's like a big fat doughnut, although in that case
14:40
Speaker 1: that it's more like a really big basketball inside a
14:44
Speaker 1: small inner tube because the grenition belt is not as
14:48
Speaker 1: tall as Jupiter. It's more focused around the equator. In
14:50
Speaker 1: that sense, m now doesn't also have jelly in it,
14:55
Speaker 1: or maybe it's a different kind of jelly, or maybe
14:57
Speaker 1: it's a cream donut. It's actually kind of stormy, you know,
15:00
Speaker 1: because Jupiter is crazy on the surface that it's always
15:03
Speaker 1: getting mixed up and colorful. So maybe it's like maybe
15:05
Speaker 1: it's like different kinds of jelly. It's more like sprinkles,
15:09
Speaker 1: all right, Well, let's get into where these radiation belts
15:12
Speaker 1: could be coming from and why they're important, where are
15:15
Speaker 1: they protecting us from? But first let's take a quick break.
15:32
Speaker 1: All right, Daniel, we're talking about the Van Allen radiation belts,
15:36
Speaker 1: which I guess there are pretty important to the Earth
15:40
Speaker 1: and they must be doing some sort of protecting because
15:43
Speaker 1: we talked about um them being a planetary defense system,
15:48
Speaker 1: maybe better than lasers, and they form a big charged donut,
15:52
Speaker 1: radioactive donut around the Earth. So I guess the big
15:56
Speaker 1: question is where do they come from? Yeah, actually they
15:58
Speaker 1: got stuck in our planet tarry defense system. We have
16:01
Speaker 1: this awesome planetary defense system which is basically just our
16:04
Speaker 1: magnetic field. And you know, the magnetic field is generated
16:07
Speaker 1: by like crazy slashing hot melted metal inside the Earth
16:12
Speaker 1: rotating it like different speeds than the Earth does, and
16:14
Speaker 1: it creates this enormous magnetic field. And anytime a charge
16:18
Speaker 1: particle comes towards the Earth, the magnetic field does its
16:21
Speaker 1: job and bends it. So the reason that we're not
16:24
Speaker 1: like constantly inundated with radiation from space produced from supernovas
16:29
Speaker 1: or from our sun is because the magnetic field. But
16:32
Speaker 1: the radiation belts themselves are basically like particles that got
16:35
Speaker 1: trapped in our magnetic field. Instead of getting like deflected
16:38
Speaker 1: and pinging off somewhere else or funneling up and going
16:41
Speaker 1: to become northern Southern lights, they get trapped around the
16:44
Speaker 1: center and they get stuck basically in orbit around the
16:47
Speaker 1: planet interesting forever. Or do they just sort of like
16:51
Speaker 1: circle around and then shoot off. Well, it's different from
16:54
Speaker 1: the two different stories. The inner radiation belt is much
16:56
Speaker 1: more stable. Those are particles that are sort of like
16:59
Speaker 1: tightly bound into the Earth and it's really pretty fixed now.
17:02
Speaker 1: They don't stay in there forever. They can impact the atmosphere,
17:05
Speaker 1: they can get knocked out. It's a little chaotic, but
17:07
Speaker 1: the lifetime inside the radiation belt can be pretty long.
17:10
Speaker 1: The outer one, though, it is much more like a
17:13
Speaker 1: free form cloud. It's further away from the Earth, the
17:15
Speaker 1: magnetic field is weaker, it's more controlled by the stuff
17:18
Speaker 1: outside the Earth and like the solar winds, so that
17:21
Speaker 1: has sort of a fluffy outer edge and things can
17:23
Speaker 1: come and leave much more quickly. But the inner one
17:26
Speaker 1: is much more tightly bound. I see, it's sort of
17:28
Speaker 1: like bugs trapped in your windshield, Like your windshield protects
17:31
Speaker 1: you from the bugs, but when when the bugs hit it,
17:36
Speaker 1: they kind of get stuck there. Exactly exactly. If the
17:40
Speaker 1: bugs were like orbiting your car at very very high speeds,
17:43
Speaker 1: it would be a perfect analogy. Well, I guess I
17:44
Speaker 1: mean they get stuck in our sort of protective shell
17:47
Speaker 1: of a magnetic field. Yeah, exactly, the thing that's protecting
17:51
Speaker 1: us gets them stuck on our surface. Yeah, we need
17:53
Speaker 1: some giant windshield pipers. Actually, we'll talk about that. There
17:57
Speaker 1: are some really cool ideas for how to use the
18:00
Speaker 1: amount of radiation stuck in these belts. So what are
18:04
Speaker 1: these belts mostly made out of? And you might imagine
18:07
Speaker 1: that most of the particles and belts just come from
18:09
Speaker 1: the Sun, because you know, the Sun pumps out a
18:12
Speaker 1: huge amount of radiation protons and electrons and a few
18:15
Speaker 1: other things. But interestingly, the stuff and the inner parts
18:18
Speaker 1: of the belt is not mostly from our solar system.
18:21
Speaker 1: A lot of that stuff comes from cosmic rays and
18:24
Speaker 1: it has to be really high energy to get all
18:26
Speaker 1: the way down towards the Earth. How far down towards
18:29
Speaker 1: the Earth depends on how much energy you have, because
18:32
Speaker 1: the higher energy particles aren't deflected as much by the
18:35
Speaker 1: magnetic field. So in this inner belt we mostly have
18:38
Speaker 1: protons that are really high energy that have come from
18:42
Speaker 1: cosmic ray collisions where the cosmic rays have come from,
18:45
Speaker 1: like somewhere else deep in the galaxy. Wow, So our
18:48
Speaker 1: magnetic field is that strong that it can deflect super
18:52
Speaker 1: high energy particles from deep in space that well, it
18:55
Speaker 1: certainly can not all of them, right, And some of
18:57
Speaker 1: these particles, the really super dupe or highest energy particles,
19:01
Speaker 1: they definitely make it through the magnetic field and hit
19:03
Speaker 1: the atmosphere and create showers. And that's a whole fascinating
19:07
Speaker 1: area of study that we've talked about. Where are these
19:09
Speaker 1: cosmic grates coming from? And so we're sort of glad
19:11
Speaker 1: that some of them make it through, But those are
19:13
Speaker 1: really rare, right. The frequency of the particles drops really
19:17
Speaker 1: quickly as the energy goes up. So the very high
19:20
Speaker 1: energy ones can penetrate through the magnetic field and get
19:22
Speaker 1: to Earth, but there aren't very many of them. The
19:24
Speaker 1: lower energy ones is much more of them, but they're
19:27
Speaker 1: more easily deflected by the magnetic field. So there's a
19:30
Speaker 1: whole spectrum there. So it's electrons and protons. That doesn't
19:33
Speaker 1: sound too harmful. I guess doesn't. It's mostly protons in
19:37
Speaker 1: the inner one. But these protons have a lot of energy,
19:41
Speaker 1: and for example, one of these protons can penetrate like
19:44
Speaker 1: more than a centimeter of lead, and so you definitely
19:47
Speaker 1: do not want to get hit by this shower of protons. Well, yeah, protons,
19:51
Speaker 1: I guess are the ones that can give your cancer, right,
19:54
Speaker 1: I mean they go in and they mess up your DNA. Yeah,
19:57
Speaker 1: they are tiny bullets and they will tear through your
19:59
Speaker 1: body and messed up up and rupture cells and mess
20:02
Speaker 1: up your DNA. And there's a lot of these things
20:05
Speaker 1: that you know, the flux is really intense. You know,
20:07
Speaker 1: it's like millions per square centimeter per second, and the
20:10
Speaker 1: numbers are even higher for electrons, and so it's a
20:13
Speaker 1: really intense amount of radiation. And that's because it just
20:16
Speaker 1: sort of builds up, you know, like cosmic rade, just
20:19
Speaker 1: keep coming and keep refreshing it. And so it's a
20:22
Speaker 1: constant source of radiation. You need those windshield wipers upstack.
20:25
Speaker 1: And yeah, it's a lot of bugs out there in space.
20:28
Speaker 1: But I guess what do you compare it to. Is it,
20:30
Speaker 1: I don't know, like a pet scan here on Earth
20:33
Speaker 1: or is it much more intense than that. These are
20:35
Speaker 1: much more dangerous than a PET scan, which is carefully
20:38
Speaker 1: tuned to give you the minimum amount of ionizing radiation necessary.
20:42
Speaker 1: The intensities here are just much much higher and much
20:45
Speaker 1: more dangerous. But you know, it's not just protons up there.
20:47
Speaker 1: There are also some electrons, And until recently, nobody really
20:51
Speaker 1: understood like, are these electrons also coming from cosmic rays
20:55
Speaker 1: or is there some other source of them. People were
20:58
Speaker 1: sort of confused because they didn't really understand and the
21:00
Speaker 1: energy spectrum of the electrons, and so they couldn't really
21:03
Speaker 1: tell where they were coming from. They didn't look like
21:05
Speaker 1: they were coming from the sun. They didn't look like
21:07
Speaker 1: they were coming from the sun, and they didn't really
21:09
Speaker 1: believe that they were coming from cosmic rays. But then
21:11
Speaker 1: there was a really cool experiment done by a bunch
21:14
Speaker 1: of students at you see Boulder. They sent up a
21:17
Speaker 1: tiny little device to measure this radiation. They attached it
21:20
Speaker 1: to one of these little CubeSats. You know how they
21:23
Speaker 1: can set up these tiny little satellites with little devices
21:26
Speaker 1: on them. So they built this thing. It's like the
21:29
Speaker 1: size of a burrito, and we've about ten pounds and
21:32
Speaker 1: they called it REPTILE, which stands for Relativistic Electron and
21:36
Speaker 1: Proton Telescope Integrated Little Experiment, which is a pretty cute acronym.
21:42
Speaker 1: And they got some really interesting cutting edge data. So
21:45
Speaker 1: this is like a science experiment done by students at
21:48
Speaker 1: a university to actually learn something about the nature of
21:51
Speaker 1: the radiation around us. And what did they learn. They
21:54
Speaker 1: showed that the energy of these electrons is actually totally
21:57
Speaker 1: consistent with the spectrum you would expect from cosmic rays.
22:01
Speaker 1: So it happens is cosmic rays come in and it
22:03
Speaker 1: hits some particle and you get a bunch of neutrons
22:05
Speaker 1: flying out. Neutrons don't last forever on their own, they
22:08
Speaker 1: fall apart, they turn to a proton and an electron.
22:11
Speaker 1: So they think that the source of these electrons is
22:13
Speaker 1: actually the same as the source of the protons, because
22:16
Speaker 1: the spectrum of the energy of the electrons looks exactly
22:19
Speaker 1: like you would expect from this mechanism from cosmic rays. Now,
22:22
Speaker 1: are these the ones coming from the Sun or from
22:25
Speaker 1: some mysterious far away object. These are not the ones
22:29
Speaker 1: coming from the Sun. These are probably coming from supernova
22:31
Speaker 1: and something else far away in our galaxy because they're
22:34
Speaker 1: too high energy to reliably be coming from the Sun.
22:38
Speaker 1: So it's sort of awesome because we're like catching these
22:40
Speaker 1: things from supernova from other stars deep in our galaxy.
22:43
Speaker 1: We're slurping them up and storing them in our radiation belt.
22:46
Speaker 1: It's sort of awesome. I mean, yes, it's deadly and
22:49
Speaker 1: it's dangerous, but it's also kind of cool and exotic.
22:51
Speaker 1: It's like picking up a shell from a beach and wondering,
22:54
Speaker 1: like where in the planet that shell came from? Yeah, exactly,
22:58
Speaker 1: And so we could have this collection protons electrons around
23:01
Speaker 1: the Earth, each one from a different place in the galaxy. Right,
23:04
Speaker 1: What a cool set of souvenirs. And so that's the
23:07
Speaker 1: inner bell and is the outer belt sort of the
23:09
Speaker 1: saying just fluffier or does they actually have jelly in it?
23:13
Speaker 1: And can you make it in with your barrito, your
23:15
Speaker 1: reptile reptile barritos eating doughnuts. The outer one is actually
23:19
Speaker 1: quite different. It's mostly electrons. The inner one is mostly
23:22
Speaker 1: protons and the outer one is mostly electrons. Interesting, you now,
23:26
Speaker 1: what would make the difference. Why it would it be different, Well,
23:28
Speaker 1: the protons have more momentum, right if you can speed
23:31
Speaker 1: up a proton higher energies because it has more mass
23:33
Speaker 1: for the same charge, it doesn't radiate that energy off
23:36
Speaker 1: as quickly, and so that's why protons tend to penetrate
23:40
Speaker 1: into the inner belt more than electrons do. It's the
23:42
Speaker 1: same reason why we have proton colliders instead of electron colliders.
23:46
Speaker 1: You accelerate electrons to really high speeds, they tend to
23:48
Speaker 1: mostly radiate that energy off by giving off photons. Protons
23:52
Speaker 1: don't do that as much, so it's easier to get
23:54
Speaker 1: them to have a lot of energy. So the outer
23:57
Speaker 1: belt is mostly electrons that couldn't penetrate to the inner belt,
24:01
Speaker 1: but still coming from the same source cosmic ray. Well,
24:03
Speaker 1: they don't actually think it comes from cosmic rays because
24:05
Speaker 1: the outer belt actually varies a lot more so the
24:08
Speaker 1: outer belt if you watch it, it changes quickly, like
24:11
Speaker 1: on the time scales of days and weeks. It grows,
24:13
Speaker 1: it shrinks, it changes shape really and you shouldn't see
24:16
Speaker 1: this kind of thing if the source is cosmic rays.
24:19
Speaker 1: Cosmic rays are pretty steady when you're averaging over a
24:22
Speaker 1: lot of supernovas and a lot of activity from lots
24:24
Speaker 1: of different stars and so on. Average there's you know,
24:27
Speaker 1: some seasonal variations, but not on the time scales that
24:30
Speaker 1: we're seeing. So people have been wondering what is the
24:33
Speaker 1: source of this outer belt. It's not cosmic rays. Is
24:36
Speaker 1: it like, you know, plasma that's floating around the Solar System?
24:39
Speaker 1: Is it something else? Is it like you know, driving
24:43
Speaker 1: through a cloud of bugs kind of like? Is that
24:46
Speaker 1: that's what you mean? Right? Like? Maybe out there in space,
24:49
Speaker 1: are there are clouds of electrons that we sometimes go through? Yeah, exactly.
24:53
Speaker 1: And so what it looks like is that the magnetic
24:56
Speaker 1: field is actually tearing atoms apart atoms of stuff that
25:00
Speaker 1: are just floating out there in the Solar System, and
25:02
Speaker 1: then yanking the electrons and actually accelerating them. And so
25:06
Speaker 1: the source of most of these electrons is not like
25:08
Speaker 1: interstellar plasma or something else. It's actually neutral items that
25:11
Speaker 1: are getting torn apart to create these protons and electrons,
25:15
Speaker 1: and then then the electrons get accelerated and turned into
25:18
Speaker 1: this outer cloud. Wow, I think I have new respect
25:21
Speaker 1: for magnetic field. It's like out there ripping it up.
25:24
Speaker 1: It's doing a lot. Yeah, it's doing a lot. And
25:26
Speaker 1: it's also really buffeted by solar storms. So if you
25:30
Speaker 1: have like a lot of activity on the Sun, like
25:32
Speaker 1: there's a huge objection of material, or you know, something
25:35
Speaker 1: happens on the surface of the Sun, then you've got
25:37
Speaker 1: a huge dump of particles towards the Earth. So the
25:40
Speaker 1: solar wind is not constant, it's varying a lot. We
25:42
Speaker 1: call this solar weather. When there's a lot of activity,
25:45
Speaker 1: you call it a solar storm, which is awesome potential
25:48
Speaker 1: title from my science fiction movie. And it can really
25:51
Speaker 1: change the shape of this It can like wash away
25:53
Speaker 1: part of this outer belt. It can contribute to it.
25:56
Speaker 1: So this outer belt is much more dynamic. It fluctuates
25:58
Speaker 1: a lot more. What do you call a sunny day
26:01
Speaker 1: in a solar weather forecast? Extra sunny? Bad news toast
26:05
Speaker 1: for toast, burnt toast exactly. Well, I guess my one
26:10
Speaker 1: question is, so these are particles trapped in our magnetic field.
26:15
Speaker 1: Does that mean that like the protons are going one
26:17
Speaker 1: way around the Earth and all those electrons are going
26:20
Speaker 1: the other way? Did they go along depending on their charge?
26:23
Speaker 1: Like it'd be cool if you know we actually have
26:25
Speaker 1: in that ring of stuff there's like two massesive particles
26:29
Speaker 1: going opposite ways. Yeah, you know, I hadn't thought about
26:31
Speaker 1: that before. I think you're right though, because, as you say,
26:34
Speaker 1: magnetic fields bends particles based on their charge, but it
26:36
Speaker 1: bends positive particles and negative particles in the other direction,
26:40
Speaker 1: which is why, for example of the collider, we actually
26:42
Speaker 1: have two beams. We have a beam of protons going
26:45
Speaker 1: one when a beam going the other way. They have
26:47
Speaker 1: to have different magnets to bend in opposite directions, and
26:51
Speaker 1: so I think you're right. I think the opposite charge
26:53
Speaker 1: would lead them to go the other directions. So I
26:55
Speaker 1: think protons are probably circling the Earth in the other
26:57
Speaker 1: direction from electrons. Yeah. Interesting, So it's like a double belt.
27:01
Speaker 1: It's like a double belt and they can wave to
27:03
Speaker 1: each other as they pass right race around the Earth
27:07
Speaker 1: still trapped here, yes, and then sort of amazingly, there's
27:11
Speaker 1: this gap in between them. It's not like it's a
27:14
Speaker 1: gradual change from protons to electrons. That's what you might
27:17
Speaker 1: expect that like higher energy particles penetrate more deeply and
27:21
Speaker 1: you get more protons near the surface and more electrons
27:24
Speaker 1: further away, and it's a smooth variation. But no, there's
27:27
Speaker 1: a gap, and there is like a shell like the
27:29
Speaker 1: inside of this outer belt is like a wall, and
27:32
Speaker 1: then there's almost nothing for a little while between the
27:35
Speaker 1: inner and outer belts. Wow, what do they think it's
27:37
Speaker 1: causing this sudden gap? They think it's actually radiation from
27:41
Speaker 1: the Earth. If you send photons up out into space,
27:45
Speaker 1: then it basically scatters those electrons, It pushes them out
27:48
Speaker 1: further into space. And so the kind of radiation you
27:51
Speaker 1: need the right energy to bounce those electrons away from
27:54
Speaker 1: the Earth is like at radio waves, and so if
27:58
Speaker 1: you beamed a bunch of radio waves from the Earth,
28:00
Speaker 1: you could like push some of that radiation back out
28:03
Speaker 1: into space. What are you saying our TV and radio
28:06
Speaker 1: signals are pushing these elightrons out? Yes, they are a
28:09
Speaker 1: little bit, but mostly it's not coming from our broadcast
28:13
Speaker 1: or from this podcast. Mostly it's coming from lightning. When
28:16
Speaker 1: you have lightning in clouds, it generates a lot of
28:19
Speaker 1: photons that's what you see, but also generates photons and
28:22
Speaker 1: spectrums you cannot see. It generates a lot of radio waves,
28:25
Speaker 1: which is one reason why, like electrical storms make it
28:28
Speaker 1: hard to listen to the radio. And so a lot
28:30
Speaker 1: of the reason that there's this inner wall to the
28:33
Speaker 1: outer belt is because of radio waves from lightning pushing
28:36
Speaker 1: those electrons out into space. Wow, that's wild. It's pretty crazy. Yeah.
28:41
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, maybe now that everything's going digital,
28:44
Speaker 1: we'll see uh decrease in the radio signals. But but
28:48
Speaker 1: now they're getting more storms due to climate change, we
28:51
Speaker 1: might actually seem more lightning. Oh man, it's all connected,
28:56
Speaker 1: it's all. And so tell me about the third belt.
28:59
Speaker 1: There's a third belt that is sometimes there and sometimes not. Yea.
29:02
Speaker 1: So for a long time people thought there was only
29:03
Speaker 1: two belts, and then NASA sent up these probes in
29:06
Speaker 1: like and they found a surprise. They found this third pocket.
29:11
Speaker 1: It's between the first belt and the third belt, right
29:14
Speaker 1: in this like safety zone in between them, and people
29:16
Speaker 1: were surprised to see it. It's in between between the
29:19
Speaker 1: two belts. Yeah, exactly, So like another layer of jelly
29:23
Speaker 1: right inside your crown nut or whatever it is that
29:25
Speaker 1: we're building this crazy pastry physics concoction. And I think
29:27
Speaker 1: it's a pro nut because it's got protons in it,
29:31
Speaker 1: electro nuts, And it was right there in between, like
29:34
Speaker 1: in the safe zone where people hadn't seen radiation before,
29:37
Speaker 1: and that was sort of surprising. And then they were
29:39
Speaker 1: surprised again because it disappeared. And so there's this third
29:43
Speaker 1: belt sometimes comes and doesn't last for very long. Is
29:47
Speaker 1: it seasonal or is it random? It's actually it's seasonal,
29:50
Speaker 1: but not based on Earth seasons. It comes from the
29:52
Speaker 1: solar storms. So sometimes the Sun will send like a
29:55
Speaker 1: huge wave of particles towards the Earth, and some of
29:59
Speaker 1: them will get like as this lightning belt and past
30:02
Speaker 1: the magnetic field and end up stuck in the safe
30:04
Speaker 1: zone and slash around for a little while before they
30:07
Speaker 1: get cleared out. Or maybe they joined the other belt
30:10
Speaker 1: so I'll get kind of smoothed at some point. Yeah,
30:13
Speaker 1: maybe they get slurped down to the lower belt or
30:15
Speaker 1: ejected out into the outer belt. But the name that
30:17
Speaker 1: scientists have for this kind of event when the Sun
30:20
Speaker 1: like really pours particles at us, it's pretty awesome. It's
30:23
Speaker 1: called a space tsunami. No, what that sounds like, I
30:30
Speaker 1: don't know, like a Japanese anime maybe, or it sounds
30:34
Speaker 1: like a Japanese anime. I definitely want to watch space tsunami,
30:38
Speaker 1: meaning like suddenly the Sun is acting up and so
30:41
Speaker 1: it sends a huge wave of stuff at us. Yeah, exactly. See,
30:44
Speaker 1: it's a perfect name because it immediately describes exactly what
30:48
Speaker 1: he's talking about. What I want to go as far
30:50
Speaker 1: as perfect Daniel, I would come, maybe call it a
30:52
Speaker 1: solar tsunami. That sounds better, A solar tsunami, all right, Yeah,
30:57
Speaker 1: but it's spelled with a T. It's like T s
31:00
Speaker 1: bell a R solar tsunami. I like it, all right.
31:04
Speaker 1: So that's where they think that this third belt comes
31:06
Speaker 1: from them, is when the sun is acting up and
31:08
Speaker 1: and so. But what makes the particles get trapped in between?
31:12
Speaker 1: Why wouldn't they go to the outer belts? Yeah, I
31:14
Speaker 1: guess it's you know, some fraction of the particles end
31:16
Speaker 1: up in the inner belt and some of them in
31:18
Speaker 1: the outer belt. But there are also some fraction that
31:20
Speaker 1: can push past this sort of lightning barrier, that have
31:23
Speaker 1: more energy than can be sustained in the outer belt
31:26
Speaker 1: and penetrate past that lightning barrier, but don't quite have
31:29
Speaker 1: enough to get to the inner belt, and then you know,
31:31
Speaker 1: eventually they get cleared. You don't have this constant source
31:34
Speaker 1: of stuff. The reason we don't have a constant third
31:36
Speaker 1: belt in there is you don't have a constant influx,
31:39
Speaker 1: and you do have a process that's clearing them out.
31:41
Speaker 1: All right, well that's super fascinating. Let's get into why
31:44
Speaker 1: these belts are important or why they point to something
31:48
Speaker 1: important about our magnetic field. First, let's take another quick break,
32:05
Speaker 1: all right, Daniel, the Van Allen radiation belts, not the
32:08
Speaker 1: Van Halen radiation built although they are pretty there's a
32:12
Speaker 1: lot of lightning involved here in an electricity and decadent
32:15
Speaker 1: lifestyle of donuts. So I feel like it's so it's
32:17
Speaker 1: sort of a tribute to evan Halen. I think if
32:19
Speaker 1: van Halen had been around, the next album would have
32:21
Speaker 1: been called Solar Tsunami. That does sound like a heavy
32:25
Speaker 1: metal album name. Yeah. Yeah, And these things are fascinating,
32:30
Speaker 1: not just because you know, scientifically we're always interested when
32:33
Speaker 1: we see something new because it raises questions why is
32:35
Speaker 1: this happening? Why is it not happening? But also there
32:38
Speaker 1: are lots of practical imvocations to these things. Yeah, these
32:41
Speaker 1: belts are important, Like are they useful to us in
32:43
Speaker 1: any way? Well, they could actually be useful. You know,
32:46
Speaker 1: these are particles zooming around at really high speeds, and
32:49
Speaker 1: there's not just protons and not just electrons. There are
32:52
Speaker 1: also some anti matter there. You know, some cosmic rays
32:55
Speaker 1: are anti matter, and sometimes collisions of cosmic rays on
32:59
Speaker 1: the Earth atmosphere create antimatter, and so there is antimatter
33:04
Speaker 1: up there trapped in these fields sort of slurping around
33:07
Speaker 1: and antimatter. It's pretty useful stuff. I mean, you could
33:09
Speaker 1: fuel like a matter antimatter reactor using antimatter, but it's
33:14
Speaker 1: pretty hard to make antimatter. Wait, these clouds, these belts
33:17
Speaker 1: have anti matter in them. They do. They have some
33:20
Speaker 1: anti protons, so they're protons swirling around in one direction,
33:24
Speaker 1: but going around the other direction. There's some anti protons,
33:27
Speaker 1: don't They hit the regular protons and and explode and
33:30
Speaker 1: and annihilate. They certainly do. And as intense as the
33:33
Speaker 1: flux is, you know, it's also pretty dilute. If you
33:36
Speaker 1: shoot one proton and another proton, you're not likely to
33:38
Speaker 1: actually get a collision. You have to have like a
33:40
Speaker 1: little cloud of them really smash into each other just
33:43
Speaker 1: to have one or two collisions. Like the Hadron collider,
33:46
Speaker 1: we collide bunches of ten to the ten protons against
33:49
Speaker 1: each other sometimes get one to five collisions. So it's
33:52
Speaker 1: not that easy actually to shoot a tiny particle at
33:55
Speaker 1: another one, But aren't they opposite charge, so so don't
33:58
Speaker 1: they attract each other? They do, but they're also moving
34:00
Speaker 1: at really high speeds. It's like you're driving down the
34:03
Speaker 1: freeway and you see somebody really attractive going the other way.
34:06
Speaker 1: Maybe you shot your phone number really fast as they
34:08
Speaker 1: go by, but you know the chances of actually making
34:10
Speaker 1: a connection for small. I've never tried that dating method, Daniel.
34:15
Speaker 1: Is that how physicists approached their love life, Well, there's
34:20
Speaker 1: a reason you haven't met a lot of people who
34:22
Speaker 1: met their spouse that way, because I don't think it
34:23
Speaker 1: works in the highway, the highway of love anyway. There
34:30
Speaker 1: are some antiprotons out there, and antiprotons are not easy
34:34
Speaker 1: to make. Like we've made some ancern in order to study,
34:37
Speaker 1: but we have like pico grams of antimatter we've made
34:41
Speaker 1: over years and years and years. But up in these
34:43
Speaker 1: belts is a lot more antimatter than we've ever made
34:46
Speaker 1: here on Earth. So you can imagine like scooping some
34:49
Speaker 1: of it up and using it to fuel your expedition
34:52
Speaker 1: to a neighboring star by by pouring it into your
34:55
Speaker 1: antimatter powered spaceship. I guess antimatters like volatile. It's like
35:01
Speaker 1: you can use it as something to burn to give
35:03
Speaker 1: your energy exactly. You combine it with matter and it
35:06
Speaker 1: turns a into energy, into electricity or whatever you need.
35:10
Speaker 1: And that's much more efficient than any other kind of
35:13
Speaker 1: fuel we have, even like fusion or fission or anything
35:16
Speaker 1: else is not nearly as efficient as antimatter. And it
35:19
Speaker 1: matters of great source of fuel. I mean, there's lots
35:21
Speaker 1: of practical questions there about can you bottle it? And
35:24
Speaker 1: can you safely store it? And will your ship blow up?
35:26
Speaker 1: And stuff like this. Yes, small, small practical matters dot
35:31
Speaker 1: dot dot, like will you die in the process. I'm
35:34
Speaker 1: sure if we invite our guitarist slash engineer on board,
35:38
Speaker 1: you know, Eddie van Halen slash van Allen will figure
35:41
Speaker 1: this out for us. All right. So it's so it's
35:43
Speaker 1: something that now NASA is actually considering, like going out
35:46
Speaker 1: there and catching some of these shooting stars or shooting antermatter. Yeah,
35:50
Speaker 1: but you know, considering is pretty broad. NASA considers a
35:53
Speaker 1: lot of stuff because that's sort of their job to
35:56
Speaker 1: think broadly and crazily. They have this group called the
35:58
Speaker 1: NASA Institute or advanced concepts, which you know, makes me
36:02
Speaker 1: think of just like people literally throwing stuff against the
36:05
Speaker 1: walls to see if it will stick. And that's great
36:07
Speaker 1: and I love that kind of like blue sky brainstorming
36:10
Speaker 1: to see maybe this could be a good thing. Mostly
36:12
Speaker 1: though it's dangerous, Like mostly the radiation belts are a
36:15
Speaker 1: big annoyance. When we send astronauts up into space or
36:19
Speaker 1: even just satellites up into space, we're sending them through
36:22
Speaker 1: these radiation belts, and it can be quite deadly. Yeah,
36:25
Speaker 1: are they like more dangerous and regular cosmic race or
36:28
Speaker 1: do you consider them cosmic race because I know we've
36:30
Speaker 1: talked about like astronauts and space stations needing shielding and
36:34
Speaker 1: sun block on them to keep them safe. Is this
36:38
Speaker 1: all part of, you know, just like the regular thing
36:40
Speaker 1: you have to watch out for in space or does
36:43
Speaker 1: it only come up in certain situations. You definitely have
36:46
Speaker 1: to watch after cosmic race whenever you're in space, because
36:48
Speaker 1: you don't have the protection of the Earth's atmosphere or
36:51
Speaker 1: our magnetic field. But this is a spot with really
36:54
Speaker 1: intense radiations, one of the most dangerous places in space,
36:57
Speaker 1: so you have to be really careful when you go
36:59
Speaker 1: through it. You know, there are billions of electrons per
37:02
Speaker 1: square centimeter per second flying through these clouds, and these
37:06
Speaker 1: protons are really high energy. Like I said, they can
37:09
Speaker 1: penetrate even like a centimeter of lead, and so this
37:13
Speaker 1: is pretty crazy stuff. So you don't want to spend
37:15
Speaker 1: a lot of time in these belts. I see. Now
37:18
Speaker 1: you are like Space Shuttle and space stations kind of
37:20
Speaker 1: watch out to try to stay clear of these radiation
37:23
Speaker 1: belts or they always in them. No, they try to
37:25
Speaker 1: stay clear of them. There's this safe zone and you
37:28
Speaker 1: try to go above them and below them, and so
37:30
Speaker 1: you definitely don't want to spend a lot of time
37:32
Speaker 1: hanging out in these radiation belts. You want to avoid that,
37:34
Speaker 1: you know, if you care about the life cycle of
37:36
Speaker 1: your astronauts, which we do, but also for your satellites,
37:40
Speaker 1: if you don't want jelly all over your space station,
37:43
Speaker 1: also for your satellites. Right, these can damage delicate electronics,
37:47
Speaker 1: and so you don't want a really high flux of
37:49
Speaker 1: protons tearing through your delicate electronics or your solar panels
37:53
Speaker 1: for any reason, even if there's nobody living on your
37:56
Speaker 1: space station or on your satellite. Yeah, you're saying that
37:58
Speaker 1: they also inner here with our wireless communications here on Earth. Absolutely, yeah.
38:04
Speaker 1: I mean it's a huge source of radiation. And so
38:06
Speaker 1: when there's like a solar storm and these things get
38:09
Speaker 1: bigger and more dramatic than these particles bouncing around everywhere,
38:13
Speaker 1: and some of our wireless communication strategy rely on bouncing
38:16
Speaker 1: off the top of the atmosphere or like sending radio
38:19
Speaker 1: waves up and having them bounce back. And so this
38:21
Speaker 1: can be interfered with when there's a lot of extra
38:24
Speaker 1: activity in the van Allen radiation belts. Sounds like a
38:26
Speaker 1: little bit of a nuisance actually, sort of like a
38:29
Speaker 1: byproduct of pro taking ourselves. Like the bugs in the windshield,
38:33
Speaker 1: could we wipe them off the windshield at some point?
38:36
Speaker 1: Wouldn't that make things safer in space? Yeah? And people
38:39
Speaker 1: are working on this stuff. And there's two totally crazy
38:42
Speaker 1: sounding ideas for how to like cleanse the planet of
38:45
Speaker 1: these things giant wipers, giant wipers thinking one of them
38:49
Speaker 1: literally is giant wipers. And so what they're gonna do
38:52
Speaker 1: is they're going to send something up it's called the
38:53
Speaker 1: high volt system, and you have a satellite which is
38:56
Speaker 1: like a really long wire behind it, and the fires
39:00
Speaker 1: held it really high voltage and so basically just what
39:03
Speaker 1: it is a white It's literally a space wiper, you know,
39:06
Speaker 1: it's the kind of thing you would see in spaceballs.
39:08
Speaker 1: But it would like fly around the planet with this
39:10
Speaker 1: high voltage tether and that would be strong enough just
39:14
Speaker 1: like kick these particles out of their geomagnetic orbit and
39:17
Speaker 1: then they would just drift off into space. And they
39:20
Speaker 1: estimate that just like fly this thing around for a
39:22
Speaker 1: couple of months, a few months of wiping, and you
39:24
Speaker 1: reduced the radiation belt. No way, what that is a
39:32
Speaker 1: pretty sense sensible idea actually to be honest and just
39:35
Speaker 1: wipe them off. Yeah, just repel them. It's like you're
39:38
Speaker 1: repelling them kind of right, Yeah, you're repelling them exactly.
39:41
Speaker 1: It sounds a little crazy. I mean, you have this
39:43
Speaker 1: really long tether, really high voltage. It could fry like
39:46
Speaker 1: you know, a person or a satellite. But you know,
39:48
Speaker 1: if you think about where you're going and where all
39:50
Speaker 1: the other satellites are and and manage all that, then
39:52
Speaker 1: I suppose it could work. Now would that help us
39:55
Speaker 1: if we got rid of these radiation belts? Would it
39:58
Speaker 1: make life easier for everyone in general? Yeah, it would
40:01
Speaker 1: reduce danger to satellites and two astronauts and that kind
40:04
Speaker 1: of stuff. They have another system that's not quite as bonkers,
40:09
Speaker 1: maybe not as fun, and that's just to beam a
40:11
Speaker 1: bunch of radio waves out into space. Like we talked
40:13
Speaker 1: about how radio waves from lightning helped keep the radiation
40:17
Speaker 1: belts from getting closer to the Earth and they create
40:19
Speaker 1: this safe zone. So if you just like pumped up
40:22
Speaker 1: the radio waves that we were broadcasting, you could help
40:24
Speaker 1: penetrate these radiation belts and cleanse them. You can like
40:27
Speaker 1: puncture them, create a leak, and some of them would
40:30
Speaker 1: flow out. Wait wait, wait, so radio ways are light right? Yeah?
40:34
Speaker 1: Radio ways are lights? Are you're saying we can shoot
40:36
Speaker 1: lasers at the radio lasers? Yeah? Or we could just
40:39
Speaker 1: you know, broadcast this podcast in laser form of out
40:44
Speaker 1: into space. Our voices right now could be helping to cleanse,
40:49
Speaker 1: give the Earth a little bit of a cleanse. Shoot electrons, shoot,
40:53
Speaker 1: get out of here, Get out of here. Yeah, this
40:55
Speaker 1: part will be especially ifficially nice job. But there are
41:03
Speaker 1: people up there in Alaska building these things and exploring
41:06
Speaker 1: this to see, like can we pump enough radio ways
41:09
Speaker 1: out past the Earth to help actually push away some
41:12
Speaker 1: of this radiation. There's a real thing people are actually
41:15
Speaker 1: doing right now. I wonder if there's some like these
41:18
Speaker 1: belts accumulate over time or is it pretty stable right now,
41:22
Speaker 1: because I wonder if like it might get worse, it
41:24
Speaker 1: might get worse. You know, we've been studying with them
41:26
Speaker 1: for about sixty years since they were discovered, but only
41:29
Speaker 1: in the last ten years we have really a lot
41:31
Speaker 1: of specific data. They're just sort of mysterious for decades
41:35
Speaker 1: and decades, and in the last ten years we've been
41:37
Speaker 1: sending up satellites to get better pictures of what's out
41:40
Speaker 1: there and how it's changing. And that's when we, for example,
41:42
Speaker 1: we learned that there's this third belt, and so it's
41:45
Speaker 1: kind of new to have like a detailed, concrete map
41:48
Speaker 1: of these radiation belts. So we don't have a lot
41:50
Speaker 1: of depth of our time information. We think the inner
41:53
Speaker 1: belt is pretty stable and the outer one is a
41:55
Speaker 1: bit more fuzzy, but it could be that there are
41:58
Speaker 1: longer cycles were unaware. Do you think it's helping or
42:01
Speaker 1: do you think it's maybe killing our magnetic field on Earth,
42:06
Speaker 1: because that could be a problem. That would be a problem.
42:08
Speaker 1: But I think our magnetic field is pretty robust. I mean,
42:10
Speaker 1: it's generated inside the Earth, and so I don't think
42:13
Speaker 1: there's any danger that these particles are going to use
42:15
Speaker 1: it up or or damage it in any way. But
42:17
Speaker 1: you know, our magnetic field actually does have a weakness
42:20
Speaker 1: to it, what like an achilles heel or kryptonite weakness, Yeah,
42:26
Speaker 1: just like that. No, it's much more like an achilles
42:30
Speaker 1: heel because you know that the Earth spins, of course,
42:33
Speaker 1: but that the Earth's magnetic axis doesn't exactly match the
42:38
Speaker 1: rotational axis, right, Like the physical north pole around which
42:41
Speaker 1: the Earth spins is not in the same place as
42:44
Speaker 1: the magnetic north pole. Right, it's a little skewed, it's
42:46
Speaker 1: a little tilted, it's a little skewed. Yeah. But there's
42:49
Speaker 1: another shift which is important, which is that the center
42:52
Speaker 1: at the magnetic field, Like if you drew a line
42:55
Speaker 1: through the magnetic north and South poles that doesn't line
42:58
Speaker 1: up with the center of the Earth. That's shifted a
43:01
Speaker 1: little bit so, and that creates a hole in the
43:03
Speaker 1: magnetic field. It means that in some places on the
43:06
Speaker 1: surface of the Earth, the magnetic field is weaker than
43:08
Speaker 1: other places, Like if you're on the spot on the
43:11
Speaker 1: Earth where the center of the magnetic field is on
43:13
Speaker 1: the other side of the center of the Earth, then
43:16
Speaker 1: you're further from the source of the magnetic field, and
43:19
Speaker 1: so the magnetic field is weaker. So on one side
43:22
Speaker 1: of the Earth, the magnetic field is a little bit stronger,
43:24
Speaker 1: and on the other side it's a little bit weaker.
43:27
Speaker 1: And where it's weaker, these radiation belts dip down closer
43:30
Speaker 1: to the surface of the Earth because they're not as repelled. Yeah,
43:33
Speaker 1: because they're not as repelled. And so this is called
43:35
Speaker 1: the South Atlantic anomaly because this is basically like a
43:39
Speaker 1: hole in the magnetic field. It's not technically a hole,
43:41
Speaker 1: is more like a weakness over the South Atlantic. It's
43:45
Speaker 1: over the ocean, but it extends out to you know,
43:47
Speaker 1: like Argentina and Brazil, and that's where the magnetic field
43:51
Speaker 1: is a little bit weaker, and these radiation belts come
43:53
Speaker 1: the closest to the Earth. Oh, and it turns with
43:56
Speaker 1: the Earth to right, because I guess our magnetic field
43:58
Speaker 1: turns with the Earth. Yeah, it's ends with the Earth.
44:00
Speaker 1: And it has a real effect, you know, Like I
44:02
Speaker 1: used to do sigence with this FIRMI telescope that would
44:05
Speaker 1: take pictures of the center of the galaxy and look
44:06
Speaker 1: for dark matter. But anytime it passed anywhere near the
44:09
Speaker 1: South Atlantic anomaly, it just saw craziness. Like you just
44:12
Speaker 1: couldn't do any signs. It was just like bathed in radiation.
44:15
Speaker 1: And so we have like special parts of our code
44:18
Speaker 1: were like, are you near Brazil. If so, you know,
44:20
Speaker 1: throw away the data, turn on the windshield wipers exactly
44:25
Speaker 1: exactly because you are hitting a lot of bugs. Pretty interesting.
44:29
Speaker 1: So it sort of sounds like the byproduct of staying
44:32
Speaker 1: safe in space, you know, it's just all the stuff
44:35
Speaker 1: we collect as we go through or the Solar system. Yeah. Absolutely,
44:39
Speaker 1: we would much prefer to have these radiation belts orbiting
44:42
Speaker 1: our Earth then have that radiation deposited on the Earth. Right,
44:45
Speaker 1: as you say, it's better to have the bugs on
44:47
Speaker 1: the windshield than in your teeth. But it'd be nice
44:50
Speaker 1: to turn those wipers on occasionally and sort of cleanse
44:52
Speaker 1: ourselves because it's right there and it's zooming around and
44:55
Speaker 1: it's high flux and it's quite deadly or not. The
44:58
Speaker 1: wind chill weapers maybe collect in a way, like you said,
45:00
Speaker 1: it might be possible to collect them and use them
45:03
Speaker 1: for something good. Yeah, it would be pretty awesome if
45:06
Speaker 1: we were creating antimatter with the Earth and collecting it
45:09
Speaker 1: and using it to travel to other stars. That would
45:12
Speaker 1: be pretty cool, right, or even power things here on Earth,
45:14
Speaker 1: like could we have antimatter solar panels in space and
45:19
Speaker 1: then you transmit the charge through a giant wire to
45:22
Speaker 1: Earth which also elsee win She'll quibier debris. I want
45:27
Speaker 1: to see this movie for sure, and I want to
45:29
Speaker 1: eat donuts while doing heavy metal radiation karate chops while
45:33
Speaker 1: we're doing it. There you go, you can do it all, Daniel,
45:38
Speaker 1: All right, Well, it's again just an interesting lesson just
45:42
Speaker 1: about all the things that are out there in space
45:44
Speaker 1: that we can't see but are there, and they're doing
45:47
Speaker 1: some amazing physics in the process and telling us a
45:51
Speaker 1: lot about our son and about what's in space. That's right,
45:54
Speaker 1: and it reminds you that there's a lot of accessible
45:57
Speaker 1: mysteries right here on Earth. There are amazing things have
46:00
Speaker 1: spending in black holes, and supernova is really far away,
46:02
Speaker 1: but there are still a lot of things we have
46:04
Speaker 1: left to figure out about the way the universe works
46:07
Speaker 1: and what's going on in our very own neighborhood. Yeah,
46:09
Speaker 1: so think about it. Thanks, time you look up up
46:11
Speaker 1: into the sky at night or even during the day,
46:15
Speaker 1: there's there are that there are giant donuts in the sky.
46:19
Speaker 1: Just don't take a bite. Thanks for listening and remember that.
46:30
Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of
46:33
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio. Or more podcast from my Heart Radio.
46:36
Speaker 1: Visit the I Heart Radio Apple Apple Podcasts, or wherever
46:40
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.