Cold War-era Nuclear Tests Created Belts of Charged Particles Around the Earth

[rangerrebew]

Cold War-era Nuclear Tests Created Belts of Charged Particles Around the Earth
By Nathaniel Scharping | May 18, 2017 2:33 pm
 

Up until 1963, both the U.S. and Soviet governments conducted over 500 atmospheric nuclear weapons tests. They blew up these weapons anywhere from 16 miles above Earth to 250, well into space. The resulting fallout is estimated to have raised levels of thyroid cancer across the country, and could one day even serve as a marker for the Anthropocene—the age of humans.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2017/05/18/nuclear-tests-cold-war-space/#.WTKYDsa1t0h

[Joe Wooten]

 888ohnoes

[Sanguine]

Bonus finding from the paper: Some types of radio waves act to create a kind of shield around the Earth that protects us from harmful radiation. Very Low Frequency (VLF) waves, the kind used to communicate with submarines, created by humans seem to push back the Van Allen belt at times by changing how the charged particles move. The VLF waves propagate outward into space and serve to deflect high-energy particles that could cause harm to organic life, a potentially beneficial finding for researchers attempting to protect human spacefarers from cosmic radiation.

[Cripplecreek]

And thus real value is found in such research.