Sputnik 2 and The Van Allen Radiation Belt
Sputnik 2 detected the Earth's outer radiation belt in the far northern latitudes, but the significance of the elevated radiation was not realized. In Australia, Professor Harry Messel intercepted the signals but the Soviets would not provide the code and the Australians would not send the data. In 1958, with Sputnik 3, they began to cooperate and confirmed the findings of the U.S. satellites Explorer 1, 3, and 4.
Read more about this topic: Sputnik 2
Famous quotes containing the words van, allen, radiation and/or belt:
“The three main medieval points of view regarding universals are designated by historians as realism, conceptualism, and nominalism. Essentially these same three doctrines reappear in twentieth-century surveys of the philosophy of mathematics under the new names logicism, intuitionism, and formalism.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
“She knows there’s no success like failure
And that failure’s no success at all.”
—Bob Dylan [Robert Allen Zimmerman] (b. 1941)
“There are no accidents, only nature throwing her weight around. Even the bomb merely releases energy that nature has put there. Nuclear war would be just a spark in the grandeur of space. Nor can radiation “alter” nature: she will absorb it all. After the bomb, nature will pick up the cards we have spilled, shuffle them, and begin her game again.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)
“The watchers in their leopard suits
Waited till it was time,
And aimed between the belt and boot
And let the barrel climb.”
—Louis Simpson (b. 1923)