back to article You always wanted to be an astronaut, right? Careful: Space is getting more and more deadly

Space is getting deadlier. The amount of radiation has increased from previous solar cycles, according to new measurements made by a team of researchers. Astronauts venturing into space now face higher doses of radiation from the onslaught of highly energetic particles in cosmic rays compared to previous crews. The increasing …

  1. Mayday

    Climate Change

    How does this affect climate change?* A lot I'm guessing, considering as the sun is the cause of all climate and all that. 20% increase in radiation and the associated 20-30% reduction in an astronaut's exposure time seems significant to me.

    *Please don't start a debate on carbon dioxide or cow farts or denial here. This question is not relating to any of that.

    1. macjules
      Joke

      Re: Climate Change

      Perhaps if we didn't have so many cars being driven in space then we could reduce the Sun's emissions?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: cars being driven in space

        As everyone knows there is only one car in space and that's electric anyway. We also don't need to worry about solar radiation as it just goes over or below us due to the flatness of the earth.

      2. ravenviz Silver badge
        Trollface

        Re: Climate Change

        So 10 lunar and Mars rovers plus Elon's roadster increasing the count by another 10% is significant! Now we're causing space climate change!

    2. mr.K

      Re: Climate Change

      The increase is in harmful radiation and not radiated power. Also a good part of it comes from space due to the sun not shielding us due to lower output.

      So the radiation bit here does not directly affect the power budget of Earth. However there is a theory that cosmic rays that reach as far in as Earth and hits the atmosphere can on impact start a cascade of reactions ending up with nuclei for water vapour to turn into clouds. This will in turn isolate the Earth during the night and trap heat. This is of course disputed as all that relates to climate is. And since there are two debates over climates, one scientific and one political, I really can't be bothered to figure out which is which. (I just read a debunking of the theory, but it was a straw man where they refuted the claim that cosmic rays are the cause of climate change where the claim is that it can affect it.)

    3. Dodgy Geezer Silver badge

      Re: Climate Change

      ...*Please don't start a debate on carbon dioxide or cow farts or denial here. This question is not relating to any of that....

      I don't know why you specify that requirement, given it cannot be complied with.

      The position of the believers in Dangerous Global Warming is that it is due to humans increasing CO2 output, that all other possibilities have been considered and found not to be important, and that the science is as settled as gravitation theory. Therefore any solar variation cannot affect 'climate change'.

      1. Omgwtfbbqtime

        "that the science is as settled as gravitation theory."

        Incorrect, if you produced a paper that that hypothesised an amendment to gravitational theory with appropriate evidence you would not get lynched, ostracised or ridiculed.

    4. Flocke Kroes Silver badge

      Re: Primate mange*

      The magic graph you are looking for is here, showing sunspots and temperature against time. Over long periods there is a clear correlation between sunspot activity and temperature. (Showing correlation is much easier than proving causation - which I will leave to someone else). The fun bit is towards the right. After hundred of years of increased sunspot activity correlating with increased temperature, we get the final fifty years of increasing temperature despite decreasing sunspot activity. What could be the cause?

      * Title changed in accordance with US word used restrictions.

    5. Gary Bickford

      Re: Climate Change

      Read “The Chillng Stars” by Henrik Svensmark (co-author Nigel Calder) He is an astrophysicist who has done some very good analysis and experimentation. I personally prefer the first edition for a more documentary style, but the second edition has follow-up material.

  2. VikiAi
    Terminator

    I suspect that no species makes it very far into space in their planetary-evolved organic form and it won't be until we have moved on to a more robust form that we will be truly ready for space in any lasting sense.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Using nanites, I suspect, for radiation hardening and/or damage repair. Theoretically, gene therapy might apply but probably a step too far.

    2. Francis Boyle Silver badge

      We just need to work out

      how to implant our consciousnesses into tardigrades.

    3. John Sager

      The main problem so far is getting decent radiation shielding out of Earth's gravity well, and if we were to go interstellar, out of the Sun's gravity well too. Of course if we were to turn into cockroaches it would help...

    4. mr.K

      I am not sure I see the reasoning here. Without a limiting time frame I don't see why we shouldn't solve most of the problems:

      -radiation. Solvable by bring enough materials with you which currently is limited by launch cost and launch cost only. The energy requirement for getting stuff into orbit isn't really all that much so the problem is purely technological and not a problem of physics. With half a century of space travel so far there has to be limits there still possible to push.

      -lack of gravity. Large enough acceleration and it is solved, but there we might bump into what's physical possible to achieve. But, tether two crafts together and send them into a spin and you are set. Just a matter of big enough spacecraft, see above. I suspect a 10 km rope would do wonders.

      -supplies. As of now, humans still need an ecosystem to function. We are less and less dependent, but we are not there yet. However, there is no reason we can not achieve an artificial ecosystem where food is either grown on the waste or synthesised directly. Carbon dioxide capture and oxygen production will regardless be a side effect.

      -energy. Some sort of nuclear reactor (be it fission or fusion) has to be brought along and fuel to feed it. But we should be able to do that today, if we really wanted to, so no problem there either.

      The problems that might be unsolvable is time or speed. Even at light speed, you are correct, we will not reach very far in a life time, just a second, some guy is calling about relativity. Where was I. Yes, if we achieve on the outside, half the speed of light, we will not get very far in a life time. So either we have to extend the life time or we have to send our children even further and so on.

      Becoming intergalactic might also be out of limits. The distances can become so large that without physics yet to be known can come to our aid, we can for all practical solutions be stuck in the Milky Way.

      1. Lars Silver badge
        Happy

        "we can for all practical solutions be stuck in the Milky Way."

        The Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy with a diameter between 100,000 and 180,000 light-years The Milky Way is estimated to contain 100–400 billion stars. There are probably at least 100 billion planets in the Milky Way. The Solar System is located within the disk, about 26,000 light-years from the Galactic Center.

        And you call that to be stuck.

        The number ten closest stat is Ross 248, 10.322 light years from us, suppose we would manage 1/10 of the speed of light, 30.000km/sec it would take us more than 100 years to reach that star.

        And about 260.000 years just for a one way trip to the Galactic Center, but of course only 26.000 years at the speed of light.

        And not being stuck in the Milky Way, would be the easy peasy task to have a look at our nearest Galaxy, the Andromeda Galaxy a spiral galaxy approximately 2.5 million light-years from earth.

        I can do it, easily, in science fiction, much faster and cheaper and safer too, and I am damned good at it.

        And I can even see it with my own eyes, like here:

        https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/98/Andromeda_Galaxy_%28with_h-alpha%29.jpg

        .

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Go

    Ahhh but what a way to go eh !

    Looking back at the solar system as you drift away toward the galaxy proper, your heart and mind in tatters just from the separation from your beloved biozone, and you have to cope with the damage from old Sol as you go.

    It's been suggested that increasing gamma may have caused life to mutate and breed more quickly, even though they lived shorter lives. And also microwaves have been found to cause mice to mutate more but they were found to have lived longer, possibly as it stimulated their bodies to repair itself more rigorously.

    So it's pot luck if we will get to the edge of heliosphere. We will probably be surfing gravity waves

    while watching screens that show isobaric like images of gravitational pressures.

    1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

      Re: Ahhh but what a way to go eh !

      And also microwaves have been found to cause mice to mutate more

      When my friend put a mouse in his microwave it mutated all right. It burst. And its tail blew off and stuck to the side. He had to buy his Mum a new microwave.

      Before you call him a monster, it was a frozen mouse to feed to his pet snake. He forgot to hit defrost, and gave it ten minutes at full power...

    2. Killing Time

      Re: Ahhh but what a way to go eh !

      I realise you are waxing lyrical but I can't really see gravity waves being a potential energy source.

      That is unless you have a couple of orbiting black holes in tow and then you would have to be able to cope with Spacetime wildly distorting around you. Hardly seems worth it.

      Probably easier to stick to a nuclear/ion drive/material scavenging setup, its currently the leading contender.

  4. Gary Heard

    Sloppy

    Very sloppy in fact.

    Solar Radiation comes from the sun (hence Solar), while the comment "The amount of solar radiation has increased from previous solar cycles, according to new measurements made by a team of researchers." would make you think that it's the sun, the next comment "now face higher doses of radiation from the onslaught of highly energetic particles in cosmic rays "

    Cosmic rays come from deep space and the increase in the number getting to us is due to the sun's cycle slowing (energetically speaking) sunspot cycle. This produces a less powerful solar wind, which, when stronger, helps prevent cosmic rays getting to far into the Sol system, currently it's weak and therefore more cosmic rays can get through to the inner solar system.

    Have a look at the Oulu neutron detector here http://cosmicrays.oulu.fi/ , it's a proxy for the number of cosmic rays hitting the atmosphere. It shows that there is always and increase in Cosmic rays as a Solar Cycle ends and the next one starts, it's just that this cycle was weak to start with so we've had a consistently higher amount of cosmic rays during the last cycle

    1. Martin Gregorie

      Re: Sloppy

      That makes sense to me, particularly the correlation between solar cycles and cosmic rays, which I already knew about. I know any change is unlikely to be purely variations in 'solar radiation' since the sun is at most a 0.5% variable star.

      This article combines sloppy reporting with lack of clarity in its text for sure, but how good is the underlying study? I've never heard of Nathan Schwadron before: I'm certain I'd remember his name if I had.

  5. TimeMaster T
    Alien

    Containment efforts

    Maybe the rest of the Cosmos is trying to prevent the infection that is "Humanity" from spreading beyond Earth.

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