Who has not dreamed of flying into space, even knowing what cosmic radiation is? At least fly to the orbit of the Earth or to the Moon, or even better - further away, to some kind of Orion. In fact, the human body is very little adapted to such travel. Even when flying into orbit, astronauts face many dangers that threaten their he alth and sometimes life. Everyone watched the cult TV series Star Trek. One of the wonderful 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 Bones, aka Bonesaw. It is very difficult to be more precise. Cosmic radiation on a journey will make a person tired, weak, sick, suffering from depression.
Feelings in flight
The human body is not adapted to life in a vacuum, because evolution did not include such abilities in its arsenal. About itbooks have been written, this issue is being studied in detail by medicine, centers have been created all over the world that study the problems of medicine in space, under extreme conditions, at high altitudes. Of course, it's funny to watch the astronaut smiling on the screen, around which various objects float in the air. In fact, his expedition is much more serious and fraught with consequences than the average inhabitant of Earth imagines, and it's not only cosmic radiation that creates trouble here.
At the request of journalists, astronauts, engineers, scientists, who 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. A person does not yet feel cosmic rays as strongly as in outer space - radiation is absorbed by the atmosphere of our planet.
Main troubles
But there are also enough overloads: a person becomes four times heavier than his own weight, he is literally pressed into the chair, it is even difficult to move his arm. Everyone has seen these special chairs, for example, in the Soyuz spacecraft. But not everyone understood why the astronaut had such a strange posture. However, it is necessary because overload sends almost all the blood in the body down to the legs, and the brain is left without blood supply, which is why fainting occurs. But invented inIn the Soviet Union, a chair 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 lack of gravity will make a person almost lose his sense of balance, orientation and coordination in space, a person may not even track moving objects. He is nauseated and vomits. The same can be caused by cosmic rays - the radiation here is already much stronger, and if a plasma ejection occurs on 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. The person becomes weak and unable to perform the tasks that are in front of him.
Riddles
However, from time to time, people also feel high cosmic radiation on Earth, for this they do not have to surf the cosmic expanses at all. Our planet is constantly bombarded by rays of cosmic origin, and scientists suggest that our atmosphere does not always provide sufficient protection. There are many theories that endow these energy particles with such a force that it significantly limits the chances of planets for the emergence of 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 registered repeatedly on satellites, and even onballoons. These are nuclei of chemical elements, protons, electrons, photons and neutrinos. Also, the presence of dark matter particles - heavy and superheavy - in the attack of cosmic radiation is not excluded. If it were possible to detect them, a number of contradictions in cosmological and astronomical observations would be resolved.
Atmosphere
What protects us from cosmic radiation? Only our atmosphere. Cosmic rays that threaten the death of all living things collide in it and generate streams of other particles - harmless, including muons, much heavier relatives of electrons. The potential danger still exists, since some particles reach the surface of the Earth and penetrate many tens of meters into its bowels. The level of radiation that any planet receives indicates its suitability or unsuitability for life. The high cosmic radiation that cosmic rays carry with them far exceeds the radiation from our own star, 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 planet's magnetic field and the thickness of the atmosphere, which significantly reduce the danger of cosmic radiation. For example, there could well be life on Mars, but the atmosphere there is negligible, there is no own magnetic field, which means there is no protection from cosmic rays that permeate the entire cosmos. The level of radiation on Mars is huge. And the effect of cosmic radiation on the planet's biosphere is such that all life on it dies.
What's more important?
We are lucky, we have both the thickness of the atmosphere enveloping the Earth, and our own sufficiently powerful magnetic field that absorbs harmful particles that have reached the earth's crust. I wonder whose protection for the planet works more actively - the atmosphere or the magnetic field? Researchers are experimenting by creating models of the planets with or without a magnetic field. And the magnetic field itself differs in these models of planets 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 exposure 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 for us it will be reflected quite inconspicuously. And if you leave the magnetic field and remove the atmosphere to one tenth of its total amount, then the dose will increase fatally - 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 are relatively dim stars, there are many of them, about eighty percent of the total number of stars in our Universe.
Space and evolution
Theorists have calculated that such planets in the orbits of yellow dwarfs, which are in zones suitable for life, have much weaker magnetic fields. This is especially true of the so-called super-Earths -large rocky planets ten times the mass of our Earth. Astrobiologists were convinced that the weak magnetic fields significantly reduced the chances of habitability. And now new discoveries suggest that this is not as big a problem as people used to think. The main thing would be the atmosphere.
Scientists are comprehensively studying the effect of increasing radiation on existing living organisms - animals, as well as on a variety of plants. Radiation-related research consists of exposing them to varying degrees of radiation, from small to extreme, and then determining whether they survive and how differently they will feel if they survive. Microorganisms, which are affected by gradually increasing radiation, may show us how evolution took place on Earth. It was cosmic rays, their high radiation that once made the future man get off the palm tree and start exploring space. And humanity will never return to the trees again.
Space Radiation 2017
At the beginning of September 2017, our entire planet was very alarmed. The sun suddenly ejected tons of solar matter after the merger of two large groups of dark spots. And this release was accompanied by class X flares, which forced the planet's magnetic field to work literally for wear and tear. A large magnetic storm followed, causing illness in many people, as well as exceptionally rare, almost unprecedented natural phenomena on Earth. For example, powerful pictures of northern lights were recorded near Moscow and in Novosibirsk, which had never been in these latitudes. However, the beauty of such phenomena did not obscure the consequences of a deadly solar flare that penetrated the planet with cosmic radiation, which turned out to be truly dangerous.
Its power was close to the maximum, X-9, 3, where the letter is the class (extremely large flash), and the number is the flash strength (out of ten possible). Along with this ejection, there was a threat of failure of space communication systems and all equipment located on the orbital station. The astronauts were forced to wait out this stream of terrible cosmic radiation carried by cosmic rays in a special shelter. The quality of communication during these two days deteriorated significantly both 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 about cosmic radiation was issued, which sounded on every continent and in every country.
Power of the Sun
The energy emitted by our luminary into the surrounding outer space is truly enormous. Within a few minutes, many billions of megatons fly into space, if you count in TNT equivalent. Mankind will be able to produce so much energy at modern rates only in a million years. Only a fifth of all the energy emitted by the Sun per second. And this is our little and not too hot dwarf! If you just imagine how much destructive energy is produced by other sources of cosmic radiation, next to which our Sun will seem like an almost invisible grain of sand, your head will spin. What a blessing that we have a good magnetic field and a great atmosphere that do not let us die!
People are exposed to this kind of danger every day because radioactive radiation in space never dries up. It is from there that most of the radiation comes to us - from black holes and from clusters of stars. It is capable of killing at a high dose of radiation, and at a low dose it can turn us into mutants. However, we must also remember that evolution on Earth occurred thanks to such flows, radiation changed the structure of DNA to the state that we observe today. If you sort out this "medicine", that is, if the radiation emitted by the stars exceeds the permissible levels, the processes will be irreversible. After all, if creatures mutate, they will not return to their original state, there is no reverse effect here. Therefore, we will never see those living organisms that were present in a newborn life on Earth. Any organism is trying to adapt to changes in the environment. Either it dies, or it adapts. But there is no turning back.
ISS and solar flare
When the Sun sent us its hello with a stream of charged particles, the ISS was just passing between the Earth and the star. The high-energy protons released during the explosion created an absolutely undesirable radiation background within the station. These particles pierce through absolutely any spacecraft. However, space technology was spared by this radiation, since the impact was powerful, but too short to disable it. Howeverthe crew all this time hid 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 began on September 4, 2017, in order to shake the cosmos with an extreme ejection on September 6. Over the past twelve years, a stronger flow on Earth has not yet been observed. The cloud of plasma that was thrown out by the Sun 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. For twelve hours, the cloud was ahead of all the calculations of our scientists, and accordingly, the planet's magnetic field was more disturbed.
The power of the magnetic storm turned out to be 4 out of 5 possible, that is, ten times more than expected. In Canada, auroras were also observed even in the middle latitudes, as in Russia. Planetary character magnetic storm happened on Earth. You can imagine what was going on in space! Radiation is the most significant danger of all existing there. 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 permeate space. The same conditions await us on any planet in the solar system: there is no magnetic field and atmosphere on our planets.
Types of radiation
In space, ionizing radiation is considered the most dangerous. These are gamma radiation and X-rays of the Sun, these are particles flying afterchromospheric solar flares, these are extragalactic, galactic and solar cosmic rays, solar wind, protons and electrons of the 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 is protected by the spacesuit and ship's skin.
Ionizing radiation delivers irreparable troubles. This is a harmful effect on all life processes that occur in the human body. When a high-energy particle or a photon passes through a substance in its path, they form a pair of charged particles - an ion as a result of interaction with this substance. This affects even inanimate matter, and living things react most violently, since the organization of highly specialized cells requires renewal, and this process, as long as the organism is alive, occurs dynamically. And the higher the level of evolutionary development of the organism, the more irreversible the radiation damage is.
Radiation protection
Scientists are looking for such funds in various fields of modern science, including pharmacology. So far, no drug has been effective, and people who have been exposed to radiation continue to die. Experiments are carried out on animals both on earth and in space. The only thing that became clear is that any drug should be taken by a person before the start of exposure, and not after.
And given that all such drugstoxic, then we can assume that the fight against the consequences of radiation has not yet led to a single victory. Even if pharmacological agents are taken on time, they only provide protection against gamma radiation and X-rays, but do not protect against ionizing radiation of protons, alpha particles and fast neutrons.
