NASA's Van Allen Probes Find Human-Made Bubble Shrouding Earth

  • Released Wednesday, May 17, 2017
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Music: Alternate and Parallel by Richard Birkin

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Humans have long been shaping Earth’s landscape, but now scientists know we can shape our near-space environment as well. A certain type of communications — very low frequency, or VLF, radio communications — have been found to interact with particles in space, affecting how and where they move. At times, these interactions can create a barrier around Earth against natural high energy particle radiation in space. These results, part of a comprehensive paper on human-induced space weather, were recently published in Space Science Reviews.

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NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

This page was originally published on Wednesday, May 17, 2017.
This page was last updated on Wednesday, May 3, 2023 at 1:47 PM EDT.

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