Word: belt
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Before the U.S. exploded a nuclear bomb high over the Pacific early this summer, famed Physicist James Van Allen predicted that the blast would create a globe-girdling belt of dangerous radiation. Last week data from orbiting injun I satellite proved him correct. The new belt is 200 to 500 miles high, just a little closer to earth than the permanent belt named after Discoverer Van Allen. But its intensity is waning and by the and of a year it will be almost undetectable...
Last week the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Department of Defense issued a sheepish joint report that proved both critics and defenders of the test were wildly wrong. The new artificial belt is unexpectedly large, strong, and long-lasting... NASA estimates can be interpreted to mean that some of the highest electrons in the new belt may last for 10,000 years...
Second: Van Allen and other scientists who have cooperated with the military originally said there would be no change in the radiation belts. Hence Kennedy's offhand remark at a press conference before the explosion: "I know there's been a disturbance about the Van Allen belt, but Van Allen says it's not going to affect the belt, and it's his." Immediately after the test, however, Van Allen claimed to have predicated all along that that there would be a dramatic though temporary perturbation in "his belt" along with the creation of an intense, short-lived artificial belt...
...outcome of the July detonation is that a belt of high radiation has been created around the earth within the natural Van Allen belts. This new zone of high energy particles will interfere with any investigation by radio of extraterrestrial phenomena because it is itself a source of radio transmission. It will furthermore necessitate changes in all programs of manned exploration of space since its intensity is such that it can cause severe damage to orbiting astronauts even after relatively short exposure...
Saved by Sapphire. At its lowest point, over the South Atlantic, the belt reaches to within 200 miles of the earth's surface. Over the Pacific it stays 500 miles above the surface. In latitude, it extends 1,800 miles north and south of the magnetic equator. It is 3,100 miles thick, reaching well into the Van Allen belt of natural radiation. Its spiraling electrons, which originated in the high altitude test explosion, have as much as 1.,00,000 electron-volts of energy. At their strongest, they are about ten times as intense as the natural radiation...