Earth’s magnetosphere, the region of space dominated by Earth’s magnetic field, protects our planet from the harsh battering of the solar wind. Like a protective shield, the magnetosphere absorbs and ...

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 ...

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 ...

What looks like a red rash on this image are "hot spots" caused by heat from fires sensed by the orbiting Suomi NPP satellite. But wait. What's that odd dot off the coast of Brazil in the middle of ...

(Phys.org) —NASA's twin Van Allen Probes will celebrate on Saturday two years of studying the sun's influence on our planet and near-Earth space. The probes, shortly after launch in August 2012, ...

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 ...

A challenge to space scientists to better understand our hazardous near-Earth space environment has been set in a new study. A challenge to space scientists to better understand our hazardous ...

Take Two translates the day’s headlines for Southern California, making sense of the news and cultural events that affect our lives. Produced by Southern California Public Radio and broadcast from ...

James A. Van Allen, the physicist who made the first major scientific discovery of the early space age, the Earth-circling radiation belts that bear his name, and sent spacecraft instruments to ...