An airplane checklist - Radiation risks

The final frontier, and the final installment of this series!

Nov 10, 2023

∙ Paid

Earth is surrounded by a system of magnetic fields, called the magnetosphere. The magnetosphere shields our home planet from harmful solar and cosmic particle radiation, but it can change shape in response to incoming space weather from the Sun.

The Earth’s magnetic field shelters life from the blazing radiation of the universe. Our atmosphere absorbs a significant amount, too. This combined shielding is so good that despite a sizzling galaxy we humans only get about 5% of our annual radiation exposure from the cosmic sources up there. But flying in an airplane puts us at very high altitudes,…

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