CrAKeN Posted May 21, 2017 Share Posted May 21, 2017 NASA spends a lot of time researching the Earth and its surrounding space environment. One particular feature of interest are the Van Allen belts, so much so that NASA built special probes to study them! They’ve now discovered a protective bubble they believe has been generated by human transmissions in the VLF range. VLF transmissions cover the 3-30 kHz range, and thus bandwidth is highly limited. VLF hardware is primarily used to communicate with submarines, often to remind them that, yes, everything is still fine and there’s no need to launch the nukes yet. It’s also used for navigation and broadcasting time signals. It seems that this human transmission has created a barrier of sorts in the atmosphere that protects it against radiation from space. Interestingly, the outward edge of this “VLF Bubble” seems to correspond very closely with the innermost edge of the Van Allen belts caused by Earth’s magnetic field. What’s more, the inner limit of the Van Allan belts now appears to be much farther away from the Earth’s surface than it was in the 1960s, which suggests that man-made VLF transmissions could be responsible for pushing the boundary outwards. Overall, this seems like an accidental, but potentially positive effect of human activity – the barrier protects the Earth from potentially harmful radiation. NASA’s YouTube video on the topic suggests that understanding this mechanism better could enable us to protect our satellites and space vehicles from some of the harmful effects of the space environment. NASA does a lot of high-end research – like the EM drive that’s got a lot of people very confused right now. Source Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Agent 86 Posted May 21, 2017 Share Posted May 21, 2017 Quote NASA's Van Allen Probes Find Human-Made Bubble Shrouding Earth Its a huge cone of silence so the aliens cant hear us https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_of_Silence_(device)#/media/File:Get_Smart-Cone-of-silence.jpg NB: sure wish the insert other media/insert image from url would work old bbc code for images does not work most time either. at least not for me. maybe its something broken on my end IDKFS but seen others have same problem alot. regards. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
humble3d Posted May 23, 2017 Share Posted May 23, 2017 Protecting equipment in space is very important but protecting human astronauts in space is more so... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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