The South Atlantic Anomaly Is The Bermuda Triangle Of Space

Outer space is a dangerous place—if the deep cold doesn't get you, the cosmic rays will. Luckily, Earth has its own pair of radiation belts that shield us from the kinds of high-energy particles that would wreak havoc on living things and delicate electronics the first time they had the chance. But there's an area of our planet where those protective belts turn on us. That area is known as the South Atlantic Anomaly.

The Van Allen Belts

In 1958, James Van Allen led a project to send the United States' first satellite into space with some simple equipment: a Geiger counter to detect radiation, and a tape recorder to, well, record sound. That project—and several after—led to the discovery that our planet is surrounded by two donut-shaped masses of high-energy particles. Those particles are leftovers of cosmic rays shooting in from outside our solar system that become trapped in that belt configuration because of the Earth's magnetic field (if you've ever seen iron filings sprinkled around a magnet, you know that a magnetic field follows a telltale pattern). Though the high-energy particles are dangerous on their own, when they're trapped in the Van Allen Belts they shield the Earth from any other dangerous particles that might elbow their way in.

Here's The Catch

Thanks for protecting us, Van Allen Belts! Well, don't be too grateful just yet. The poles of Earth's magnetic field don't line up perfectly with its poles of rotation; they're actually tilted by 11 degrees. That means the Van Allen Belts are tilted too. This leads the inner donut-shaped mass of deadly high-energy particles to dip dangerously low to the Earth's surface—as close as 124 miles (200 kilometers) at some points over the South Atlantic and Brazil. That's well below the path of many satellites, which are forced to pass through the belt and get pummeled by protons. And we're talking pummeled: every square centimeter is hit 3,000 times per second. That abuse can cause all sorts of problems, from data glitches to electronic damage. As a result, engineers tell their satellites to power down as they pass through the anomaly in hopes that their data will be protected.