Who did not dream about flying into space, even knowing what cosmic radiation is? At least to fly into orbit of the Earth or to the Moon, or better yet, away, into some kind of Orion. In fact, the human body is very little adapted to such travels. Even when flying into orbit, astronauts face many dangers that threaten their health, and sometimes life. Everyone watched the cult TV series Star Trek. One of the remarkable characters there gave a very accurate description of such a phenomenon as cosmic radiation. “These are dangers and diseases in darkness and silence,” said Leonard McCoy, aka Bony, aka Kostoprava. More precisely expressed is very difficult. Cosmic radiation during the journey will make a person tired, weak, sick, suffering from depression.
Sensations in flight
The human body is not adapted to life in airless space, since evolution did not include such abilities in its arsenal. Books have been written about this, this question is studied in full detail by medicine, centers have been created all over the world to study the problems of medicine in space, in extreme conditions, at high altitudes. Of course, it’s fun to watch how the astronaut smiles on the screen, around whom various objects float in the air. In fact, his expedition is much more serious and fraught with consequences than it seems to a simple resident from Earth, and here not only cosmic radiation creates trouble.
At the request of journalists, astronauts, engineers, scientists, who have personally experienced everything that happens to a person in space, spoke about the sequence of various new sensations in an artificially created environment alien to the body. Literally ten seconds after the start of the flight, an unprepared person loses consciousness, because the acceleration of the spacecraft increases, separating it from the launch complex. Man is not yet as strong as in outer space, he feels cosmic rays - radiation is absorbed by the atmosphere of our planet.
Major troubles
But there are enough overloads: a person becomes four times heavier than his own weight, he literally presses him into a chair, it is difficult to move his hand even. Everyone saw these special chairs, for example, in the Soyuz spacecraft. But not everyone understood why the astronaut had such a strange pose. However, it is necessary because overloads send almost all the blood in the body down to the legs, and the brain remains without blood supply, which is why fainting occurs. But the chair invented in the Soviet Union helps to avoid at least this trouble: a posture with raised legs makes the blood supply oxygen to all parts of the brain.
Ten minutes after the start of the flight, the absence of gravity will cause a person to almost lose their sense of balance, orientation and coordination in space, a person may not even track moving objects. He is sick and vomits. Cosmic rays can cause the same thing - radiation is already much stronger here, and if there is a plasma ejection into the sun, the threat to the life of astronauts in orbit is real, even passengers of airliners can suffer in flight at high altitude. Vision changes, edema and changes in the retina occur, the eyeball is deformed. A person becomes weak and cannot complete the tasks that confront him.
Riddles
However, from time to time, people feel high cosmic radiation on the Earth, for this it is absolutely not necessary for them to plow the space. Rays of cosmic origin constantly bombard our planet, and scientists suggest that our atmosphere is far from always providing sufficient protection. There are many theories that give these energy particles such power that greatly limits the chances of the planets to have life on them. In many ways, the nature of these cosmic rays is still an unsolvable mystery for our scientists.
Subatomic charged particles in space move almost at the speed of light, they have already been recorded more than once on satellites, and even on balloons. These are nuclei of chemical elements, protons, electrons, photons and neutrinos. Also, the presence of dark matter particles, heavy and superheavy, in the cosmic radiation attack is not ruled out. If they could be found, a whole series of contradictions in cosmological and astronomical observations would be resolved.
Atmosphere
What protects us from cosmic radiation? Only our atmosphere. Cosmic rays threatening death to all living things collide in it and generate flows of other particles - harmless, including muons, much heavier relatives of electrons. A potential danger still exists, since some particles reach the Earth's surface and penetrate many tens of meters into its bowels. The level of radiation that any planet receives shows its suitability or unsuitability for life. The high cosmic radiation that cosmic rays carry with them far exceeds the radiation from their own stars, because the energy of protons and photons, for example, our Sun, is lower.
And with a high dose of radiation, life is impossible. On Earth, this dose is controlled by the strength of the magnetic field of the planet and the thickness of the atmosphere, it is they who significantly reduce the danger of cosmic radiation. For example, life could exist on Mars, but the atmosphere is negligible, there is no intrinsic magnetic field, and therefore there is no protection from cosmic rays that permeate the entire cosmos. The level of radiation on Mars is huge. And the influence of cosmic radiation on the biosphere of the planet is such that all life on it dies.
What is more important?
We are lucky, we have both a thickness of the atmosphere enveloping the Earth, and our own sufficiently powerful magnetic field that absorbs malicious particles that have reached the earth's crust. I wonder whose defense for the planet is more active - the atmosphere or the magnetic field? Researchers experiment by creating planet models, supplying them with a magnetic field or not. And the magnetic field itself is different for these planet models in strength. Previously, scientists were sure that it was the main protection against cosmic radiation, since they control its level on the surface. However, it was found that the amount of radiation determines to a greater extent the thickness of the atmosphere that covers the planet.
If the magnetic field is “turned off” on Earth, the radiation dose will only double. This is a lot, but even us will be reflected quite imperceptibly. And if you leave the magnetic field and remove the atmosphere to one tenth of its total amount, then the dose will increase killer - by two orders of magnitude. Terrible cosmic radiation will kill everything and everyone on Earth. Our Sun is a yellow dwarf star, it is around them that the planets are considered the main contenders for habitability. These stars are relatively dim, there are many, about eighty percent of the total number of stars in our universe.
Space and evolution
Theorists have estimated that such planets in the orbits of yellow dwarfs, which are in areas suitable for life, have much weaker magnetic fields. This is especially true for the so-called super-Earths - large rocky planets weighing ten times the size of our Earth. Astrobiologists were convinced that the weakness of magnetic fields significantly reduces the chances of being fit for life. And now new discoveries say that this is not such a large-scale problem, as they used to think. The main thing would be the atmosphere.
Scientists comprehensively study the effect of increasing radiation on existing living organisms - animals, as well as on a variety of plants. Studies related to radiation are that they are exposed to varying degrees, from small to extreme, and then they determine whether they will survive and how much else they will feel if they survive. Microorganisms affected by gradually increasing radiation may show us how evolution took place on Earth. It was cosmic rays, their high radiation that once made a future person get off a palm tree and study space. And again, humanity will never return to trees.
Cosmic Radiation 2017
At the beginning of September 2017, our entire planet was greatly alarmed. The sun suddenly ejected tons of solar matter after the merger of two large groups of dark spots. And this surge was accompanied by outbreaks of class X, which made the planet’s magnetic field literally wear out. A large magnetic storm followed, causing malaise in many people, as well as extremely rare, almost unprecedented natural phenomena on Earth. For example, near Moscow and Novosibirsk, powerful pictures of the northern lights were never recorded that had never been in these latitudes. However, the beauty of such phenomena did not obscure the consequences of a killer solar flare that permeated the planet with cosmic radiation, which turned out to be truly dangerous.
Its power was close to maximum, X-9.3, where the letter is the class (extremely large flash), and the number is the flash power (out of ten possible). Along with this release, there was a threat of failure of space communications systems and all equipment located at the orbital station. The astronauts were forced to wait for this stream of terrible cosmic radiation carried by cosmic rays in a special shelter. The quality of communication in these two days has deteriorated significantly in Europe and in America, exactly where the flow of charged particles from space was directed. About a day before the moment when the particles reached the surface of the Earth, a warning was made about cosmic radiation, which sounded on all continents and in every country.
The power of the sun
The energy emitted by our luminary into outer space is truly enormous. Within a few minutes, many billions of megatons fly into space, if we count in TNT equivalent. Humanity can generate so much energy at a modern pace in just a million years. Only a fifth of all the energy radiated by the Sun per second. And this is our small and not too hot dwarf! If you just imagine how much destructive energy is generated by other sources of cosmic radiation, next to which our Sun will seem like an almost invisible grain of sand, your head will go round. What a blessing that we have a good magnetic field and a great atmosphere that prevent us from dying!
People are exposed to this danger every day, because the radioactive radiation in space never runs dry. It is from there that most of the radiation comes to us - from black holes and from clusters of stars. She is able to kill with a large dose of radiation, and with a small one - to make us mutants. However, one must remember that evolution on Earth occurred due to such flows, radiation changed the structure of DNA to the state that we observe today. If you sort through this “medicine”, that is, if the radiation emitted by the stars exceeds the permissible levels, the processes will be irreversible. After all, if the creatures mutate, they will not return to their original state, there is no inverse effect here. Therefore, we will never see those living organisms that were present in the newborn on Earth. Any organism tries to adapt to changes in the environment. Or dies, or adjusts. But there is no turning back.
ISS and solar flare
When the Sun sent us its hi with a stream of charged particles, the ISS just passed between the Earth and the luminary. High-energy protons released during the explosion created an absolutely undesirable radiation background within the station. These particles pierce through absolutely any spaceship. Nevertheless, this radiation was spared by space technology, because the impact was powerful, but too short to incapacitate it. However, the crew hid all this time in a special shelter, because the human body is much more vulnerable than modern technology. The outbreak was not one, they went in a whole series, but it all started on September 4, 2017, in order to shock the cosmos with extreme release on September 6. Over the past twelve years, a stronger current on Earth has not yet been observed. The plasma cloud that the Sun ejected overtook the Earth much earlier than planned, which means that the speed and power of the stream exceeded the expected one and a half times. Accordingly, the impact on the Earth was much stronger than expected. By twelve hours the cloud was ahead of all the calculations of our scientists, and accordingly the planet’s magnetic field was more indignant.
The power of the magnetic storm was estimated at four out of five possible, that is, ten times more than expected. In Canada, auroras were also observed even in the middle latitudes, as in Russia. A planetary nature of a magnetic storm happened on Earth. You can imagine what was happening there in space! Radiation is the most significant hazard of all. Protection from it is needed immediately, as soon as the spacecraft leaves the upper atmosphere and leaves magnetic fields far below. Streams of uncharged and charged particles - radiation - constantly penetrate the cosmos. The same conditions await us on any planet of the solar system: there is no magnetic field or atmosphere on our planets.
Types of radiation
In space, the most dangerous is ionizing radiation. These are gamma radiation and X-rays of the Sun, these are particles flying after chromospheric solar flares, these are extragalactic, galactic and solar cosmic rays, the solar wind, protons and electrons of radiation belts, alpha particles and neutrons. There is also non-ionizing radiation - this is ultraviolet and infrared radiation from the Sun, this is electromagnetic radiation and visible light. There is no great danger in them. We are protected by the atmosphere, and the astronaut - the spacesuit and the lining of the ship.
Ionizing radiation causes irreparable disasters. This is a harmful effect on all life processes that occur in the human body. When a high-energy particle or photon passes through a substance in their path, they form a pair of charged particles, an ion, as a result of interaction with this substance. This affects even inanimate matter, while living things react most violently, since the organization of highly specialized cells requires renewal, and this process, as long as the body is alive, takes place dynamically. And the higher the level of evolutionary development of an organism, the more irreversible radiation damage is obtained.
Radiation protection
Scientists are looking for such tools in various fields of modern science, including in pharmacology. So far, not a single drug has effective results, and people exposed to radiation continue to die. The experiments are conducted on animals and on the earth, and in space. The only thing that became clear was that any drug should be taken by a person before the start of irradiation, and not after.
And if we consider that all such drugs are toxic, then we can assume that the fight against the effects of radiation has not yet led to any victory. Even if pharmacological agents are taken on time, they provide protection only from gamma radiation and x-rays, but do not protect against ionizing radiation from protons, alpha particles and fast neutrons.