A NASA-led study of the Van Allen radiation belts has uncovered new information about the invisible “shield” that keeps harmful ultrarelativistic electrons from the Earth. Just last year, the probes reported the existence of a new, previously-unknown third belt thousands of kilometres above the Earth.
Until now, electrons have been regarded as elementary particles — which means that scientists thought they had no component parts or substructure. But, for the first time, electrons have been observed decaying into two separate parts — causing physicists to rethink what they know about the particles.
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