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The average annual solar radiation arriving at the top of the Earth's atmosphere is about 1361 W/m 2. This represents the power per unit area of solar irradiance across the spherical surface surrounding the Sun with a radius equal to the distance to the Earth (1 AU).
Earth has two such belts, and sometimes others may be temporarily created. The belts are named after James Van Allen, who published an article describing the belts in 1958. [1] [2] Earth's two main belts extend from an altitude of about 640 to 58,000 km (400 to 36,040 mi) [3] above the surface, in which region radiation levels vary.
695,700 kilometres (432,300 miles) is approximately 10 times the average radius of Jupiter, 109 times the radius of the Earth, and 1/215th of an astronomical unit, the approximate distance between Earth and the Sun.
Regardless of the time of day (i.e. Earth's rotation on its axis), the North Pole will be dark, and the South Pole will be illuminated; see also arctic winter. Figure 3 shows the angle of sunlight striking Earth in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres when Earth's northern axis is tilted away from the Sun, when it is winter in the north and ...
During the 1960s, spacecraft traveling above Earth's poles discovered a stream of particles flowing out of the Earth's poles, and theorized that there must be an unknown field driving these ...
Sunlight on the surface of Earth is attenuated by Earth's atmosphere, so that less power arrives at the surface (closer to 1,000 W/m 2) in clear conditions when the Sun is near the zenith. [100] Sunlight at the top of Earth's atmosphere is composed (by total energy) of about 50% infrared light, 40% visible light, and 10% ultraviolet light. [101]
Turns out 780,000 years is over double the time Earth usually takes between flips. Mitchell: In the past 65 million years since the last mass extinction there have been reversals roughly every ...
Associated with solar flares is a release of high-energy protons. These particles can hit the Earth within 15 minutes to 2 hours of the solar flare. The protons spiral around and down the magnetic field lines of the Earth and penetrate into the atmosphere near the magnetic poles increasing the ionization of the D and E layers.