Researchers are working to gain insight into the Van Allen radiation belts that surround Earth in an effort to better-protect astronauts and space vessels.
Recent studies have shown the belts can accelerate up to the speed of light, a University of New Hampshire news release reported.
"This mode of action is analogous to that of a particle accelerator like the Large Hadron Collider. However, in this case, the Earth's vast magnetic field, or magnetosphere, which contains the Van Allen belts, revs up drifting electrons to ever-higher speeds as they circle the planet from west to east," the news release reported.
Researchers have also made similar observations on a microscopic scale as opposed to planetary. The researchers used data gathered aboard NASA's Van Allen Probes twin spacecraft to make their findings.
"The acceleration we first reported operates on the scale size of an electron's gyromotion-it is a really local process, maybe only a few hundred meters in size," Harlan Spence, director of the UNH Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space, principal scientist for the ECT, and study coauthor, said. "Now we're seeing this large-scale, global motion involving ultra low-frequency waves pulsing through Earth's magnetosphere and operating across vast distances up to hundreds of thousands of kilometers."
The two spacecrafts take measurements in different areas of nearby space. Having two measurements taken in different places but at the same time has greatly helped researchers understand them.
"With the Van Allen Probes, I like to think there's no place for these particles to hide because each spacecraft is spinning and 'glimpses' the entire sky with its detector 'eyes', so we're essentially getting a 360-degree view in terms of direction, position, energy, and time," Spence said
The proves were launched in August of 2012 and have since gathered evidence the phenomenon is "three-belt structure" as opposed to two.
"People have considered that this acceleration process might be present but we haven't been able to see it clearly until the Van Allen Probes," Ian Mann of the University of Alberta.
