Published in ScienceNOW, 23 Sep 2011
If you thought the outlook for Earth’s climate looked bleak, don’t look up. A new study suggests that space weather—the hail of energetic particles above our atmosphere—is set to worsen in coming decades. The grim forecast suggests that astronauts and frequent flyers will face greater radiation hazards and could rule out a crewed mission to Mars before 2050.
Space weather is a general term for the environmental conditions above Earth’s atmosphere. When space weather is bad, dangerous particles abound. These include protons and ions, known as galactic cosmic rays (GRCs), raining down at near-light speed from space, and similar particles coming in bursts from the sun, called solar energetic particles (SEPs). […]
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