Earth's magnetosphere: Discovery of zebra stripes in space resolves a half-century mystery
Tuesday, July 14, 2015 - 13:00
in Astronomy & Space
In the 1960s, NASA launched six satellites to study Earth's atmosphere, magnetosphere and the space between Earth and the moon. Using observations from those satellites, researchers have detected mysterious plasma waves in the Van Allen radiation belts, the donut-shaped rings surrounding Earth that contain high-energy particles trapped by the planet's magnetic field.