alt Hacker NewsYeah, that's nonsense. The radiation in low Earth orbit is only a bit less than above the magnetosphere, and most of that difference is from shadowing by the Earth itself. In contrast, there's a massive decrease in radiation from LEO to to sea level.
Radiation at ISS: 144 mSv per year
Radiation on a trip to Mars: ~340 mSv per year
Cosmic radiation at sea level: about 0.4 mSv per year
The atmosphere is doing the heavy lifting in shielding us from cosmic radiation, not the magnetosphere.
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> Yeah, that's nonsense.
Assuming you're right, why do you suppose so many publications get it wrong?
Not only the NASA one I linked to but also Wikipedia for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_ray
Or the European Space Agency: https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Cluste...
You will forgive me if I take their assessment more seriously than yours, but I'm open to correcting my understanding.
> Radiation at ISS: 144 mSv per year
> Radiation on a trip to Mars: ~340 mSv per year
This seems to track with research that during a geomagnetic excursion[1], where the field strength dropped to about 10%, the cosmic radiation seems to have roughly doubled[2].
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_excursion
[2]: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1041098