In 1958, James Van Allen discovered far fewer cosmic rays than expected using a cosmic-ray detector and suggested that a belt of strong radiation may have damaged the device. The belts were therefore ...

NASA’s Van Allen Probes mission has discovered a previously unknown third radiation belt around Earth, revealing the existence of unexpected structures and processes within these hazardous regions of ...

Our planet is nestled in the center of two immense, concentric doughnuts of powerful radiation: the Van Allen radiation belts, which harbor swarms of charged particles that are trapped by Earth’s ...

Remember the big solar storm in May? Scientists have just discovered that, in addition to creating spellbinding auroras, the storm also made a new temporary ring of charged, high-energy particles ...

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One year after their launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 4:05 a.m. E DT on Thursday, Aug. 30, 2012, NASA’s twin Van Allen Probes have already fundamentally changed how we understand the ...

Using data from a NASA satellite, a team of scientists led by the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and involving the University of Colorado Boulder have discovered a massive particle ...

Not all that far above your head is a particle accelerator that would put the Large Hadron Collider to shame. There, charged particles, some carried in by the solar wind, some created by cosmic rays, ...