A few days ago, NASA’s Van Allen probes, which are designed to study electrons and
ions in space, reported that there is actually an artificial barrier surrounding Earth created
by none other than, well, us,
and we didnt even know we were creating it!
This artificial barrier was the result of low frequency radio communications created
by human activity.
Very low frequency signals, or VLF, are often emitted by radio telescopes that have the
task of contacting submarines in the ocean.
But while most of the signals are sent down into the deep, dark waters, some signals also
float into the atmosphere, resulting in something called a VLF bubble that surrounds the earth.
The VLF bubble extends all the way to the inner edge of the Van Allen radiation belts,
3 belts that have energetic charged particles held by Earth’s magnetic field.
The interaction between the VLF bubble and the radiation belts results in the artificial
barrier that we’re talking about.
Phil Erickson, one of the scientists involved in the discovery, said:
In fact, if the VLF bubble didn’t exist, then we would be much closer to the radiation
belt than we currently are.
As shown in data from the 1960s, the Van Allen radiation belt was actually much closer to
Earth back then than it is right now.
But the barrier is actually protecting the earth from space radiation.
Not only that, researchers also say that this barrier will be able to shield us from
other dangers like coronal mass ejections, which are explosions that occur on the sun
that may result in geomagnetic storms that can destroy communication satellites and power
grids as well as affect the weather in space.
Scientists are now saying that the barrier could also potentially remove excess radiation
around earth and are carrying out experiments as we speak.
A report over the weekend has announced that one of the strangest stars in the universe, the KIC 8462852,
also known as Tabby’s Star, has started behaving very strangely again.
This star, nicknamed the ‘alien megastructure star’, was originally discovered in 2009
and is located 1,500 light years away from earth between the Cygnus and Lyre constellations
of our Milky Way galaxy.
This star is called the ‘alien megastructure star’ because in late 2015,
astronomers led by Tabetha Boyajian (AKA Tabby)
discovered that the star was emitting light in very strange patterns.
To give a little background info: stars usually emit light in very slight dips of less than
1 percent every few weeks, days, or months.
But to the astronomers’ surprise, Tabby's star was emitting light dips of up to 22 percent!
And the strange thing was that the light dips didn’t follow a particular pattern either,
which left astronomers and scientists completely baffled.
No one had a clue what was going on, and could think of no explanations as to why the star
was behaving the way it was.
As a result, one researcher offered the possibility that an 'alien megastructure' was messing
with the star, which is how it got it’s nickname ‘alien megastructure star’.
According to Jason Wright, Associate Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at Penn State,
the star started dimming again last Friday, and has already dimmed by 3 percent
in the matter of a few days.
He immediately tweeted about the phenomenon on twitter, which caused everyone in the astronomical
community to freak out and run for their telescopes.
The reason why this second dimming of the KIC 8462852 is so important is because it
allows researchers to gather more data about its bizarre dip patterns.
During the last dipping in 2015, astronomers were not able to collect enough data to provide
reasonable explanations about the strange star’s light patterns.
Of course, people are even considering the possibility of alien intervention.
In fact, this star is one of the few phenomenons where no one has even discounted the aliens yet
That’s how weird it is.
In fact, Wright believes that the star’s irregular light emission is caused by something
like the dyson sphere we see in sci-fi movies, a huge alien sphere created around a star that surrounds
it and absorbs all of the energy output of the star so that lifeforms can live on the
star’s surface.
Regarding wright’s theory about the dyson sphere, Matt Muterspaugh says: