Do we see these types of radiation belts on other planets as well?

There's still questions on how exactly the particles get trapped in the first place.

Have you turned on your mini magnetosphere?

Hello, welcome to the supermassive podcast from the Royal Astronomical Society,

with me, science journalist Izzy Clark and astrophysicist Dr.

Becky Smethurst. Yeah, buckle up this month. It's all about the charged particles trapped around our planet,

the Van Allen Radiation Belt. We'll find out all about them with the help of Dr. Maria Theresa Valach from Lancaster

University. Plus, we have Dr. David DeVorkin from the Smithsonian to explore how Explorer

One discovered the belt in 1958. But that is not, oh, obviously. Dr. Robert Massey, the deputy

director of the Royal Astronomical Society, is here too. So let's start with the basics, Robert. What are the Van Allen belts? Well, it's almost like a topic that's hard to start with the basics, but the summary of it is these are belts of radiation near the earth. They're between about 660,000 kilometers altitude from

the Earth, so up in space, and they're charged particles primarily from the sun that are trapped

in the Earth's magnetic field, the magnetosphere. Now, that's a good thing in many ways, because it

stops these things interacting so much with the Earth's atmosphere and protects our atmosphere, too.

So part of the reason that the Earth is a clement and nice place to live is because we've got this protective magnetic field around us. It's not true for all the other planets, let alone planets around other stars. These things are, you know, they're great for that. But as we'll find out in the program, they're also not brilliant, say, for space travels. So you do have to consider that. It's not that it's impossible to get through them, as we'll find out in the program, they're also not brilliant, say, for space travellers, so you do have to consider that. It's not that it's impossible to get through them, as we'll

discuss, but they are a sort of risk for space travellers and also for sensitive satellites as

well. We have to protect our equipment from the strong effects of radiation.

Cheers, Robert. Yeah, I guess we're really going to have to dive into this. Astronomer's

least favorite topic, magnetic field, all of the stuff that comes with it. But we'll catch up with you, Robert, later in the podcast.

But is it really fair to call them belts, though? I mean, that implies a skinny line around the center of our planet. But in fact, they're shaped more like onion layers.

Becky's favourite quote from Shrek.

Do you want to dive in here?

Ogres are like onions.

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