
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, May 26, 1993                   TAG: 9305260116
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The Baltimore Sun
DATELINE: BALTIMORE                                LENGTH: Short

3RD RADIATION BELT FOUND AROUND EARTH

A NASA satellite has located a third radiation belt surrounding the Earth, one that traps flotsam and jetsam from exploded stars, galactic dust clouds and the Big Bang itself, scientists said Tuesday.

The space agency's Sampex satellite, launched in June 1992, has mapped a portion of the new belt - where particles snared in the Earth's magnetic field bounce back and forth between the north and south magnetic poles - only a few hundred miles above the Earth's surface.

In 1958, James A. Van Allen, now of the University of Iowa, discovered two radiation belts, one of which bottles up neutrons and the other protons, using data from NASA's Explorer I satellite.

The new belt, which dips closest to Earth over the South Atlantic, is embedded in the lower of the two Van Allen belts, scientists said.

"It's sort of a melting pot for everything that's been happening in the galaxy over the last 10 to 15 billion years," said Richard A. Mewaldt of the California Institute of Technology, speaking at the American Geophysical Union meeting in Baltimore. "It's interstellar material right in our own backyard."

by CNB