We've Got a Hotspot of Satellite-Wrecking 'Killer Electrons' in the Outer Van Allen Belt...
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Scientists have discovered a dangerous hotspot in Earth's Van Allen radiation belts that spews so-called "killer electrons" that can knacker satellites and spacecraft.
Our home world is surrounded by two donut-shaped Van Allen radiation belts teeming with electrically charged particles. The inner belt stretches from 400 to 6,000 miles above our planet's surface, and the outer one ranges from 8,400 to 36,000 miles out.
The electrons and protons in the belts are tiny in size, though they pack a sizable punch as they zoom around close to the speed of light. Any satellites that fly through the belts are pelted by the particles, which can damage any on-board electrical equipment, such as sensors and cameras.
Killer electrons [in] these belts pose an even greater risk: their energies run up to millions of electron volts, which can completely frazzle or kill passing spacecraft.
Now, physicists led by boffins at Nagoya University, Japan, have homed in on one region in particular of the belts that produces these killer electrons.
"An important topic in space weather science is understanding the dynamics of killer electrons in the Van Allen radiation belt," Yoshizumi Miyoshi, a professor at the Institute for Space-Earth Environmental Research at Nagoya University, said this week. "The results of this study will improve the modelling and lead to more accurate forecasting of killer electrons in Van Allen radiation belts."
The [scientists] found this killer-electron hotspot by analyzing readings from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Arase satellite and NASA's Van Allen Probes. This hotspot pumps out accelerated electron fluxes with energies from 500,000 to 2 million electron volts, according to a paper published in Geophysical Research Letters.
Remote Detection of Drift Resonance Between Energetic Electrons and Ultralow Frequency Waves: Multisatellite Coordinated Observation by Arase and Van Allen Probes, Geophysical Research Letters (DOI: 10.1029/2019GL084379)
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