

NASA Van Allen Probes Discover Particle Accelerator in Earth's Radiation Belts - mayanksinghal
http://www.scienceworldreport.com/articles/8401/20130726/nasa-van-allen-probes-discover-particle-accelerator-earths-radiation-belts.htm

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jonathlee
I'm glad to see NASA astrophysicists are finally catching up with what plasma
physicists have known since 1903 when Kristian Birkeland predicted exactly
this. This phenomenon is known as "Birkeland Currents" ([http://www.plasma-
universe.com/Birkeland_current](http://www.plasma-
universe.com/Birkeland_current)). Now if they would only stop using improper
terminology such as "solar wind", "magnetic reconnection" and "frozen magnetic
fields" and maybe even read actual plasma physics papers about the many years
of real-life lab experiments that have shown the existence of this exact
phenomenon.

