Scientists Find A 'Star Trek' Field Wrapping The Earth To Save It From Killer Electrons

"Star Trek" seems to be playing out in real life! Scientists say that the earth is "wrapped in an invisible force field" that resembles space shields in "Star Trek." The shield lies about 7,200 miles above the earth. That is why it keeps away the threat of high energy electrons that can "fry" astronauts, satellites, and space systems during "intense solar storms."

The news was reported in the journal Nature. There is an "extremely sharp" boundary within the Van Allen radiation belts. In the 1950s, James Van Allen had made the major discovery of the belts in the field of space science. These doughnut-shaped rings are filled with dynamic electrons and protons. They respond to energy from the sun that keeps impacting the earth, even as they shield the earth from space radiation and the sun's activity.

His protégé, Daniel Baker, in 2013, at the University of Colorado Boulder, who got his doctorate under Van Allen, led another team to discover an "extremely sharp boundary at the inner edge of the outer belt," according to earthsky.org. This layer is like a Star-Trek shield. Baker said that it is as if these electrons are impacting a glass wall in outer space.

Calling it an "extremely puzzling phenomenon," the scientists said that just as the shield in "Star Trek" helped to push back alien weapons, these invisible shields are working remarkably in a similar way, blocking out electrons, according to The Huffington Post. Initially, the team had felt that the highly charged electrons are "looping around the Earth" at a rate of over 100,000 miles every second. Scientists had thought that they would slowly go down into the upper atmosphere. However, a pair of probes launched in 2012 to explore the Van Allen belts exhibited that the electrons were blocked in their routes before they reached that level.

It is a mystery that defies explanation, according to the scientists. There was no linking to magnetic field lines or human-generated radio signals. Prof. Baker said that the team should continue to look at the region in greater depth with the help of instruments that had a lot of force, on the Van Allen probes.