Based on their models, the authors suggest that the high radiation intensity of the inner belt could persist for as long as a decade.
FORBES: A Powerful Solar Storm Could Render Satellites Inoperable For Years
But the slow decay in radiation intensity from a tabletop pulsar would make possible extremely long-range transmitters, giving far-off space probes an energy-efficient way to beam information back to earth.
However, satellites are shielded from that radiation, and the intensity of the radiation in the inner belt is relatively stable.
FORBES: A Powerful Solar Storm Could Render Satellites Inoperable For Years
"Within just a few days, the heliospheric intensity of trapped radiation decreased, and the cosmic ray intensity went up as you would expect if it exited the heliosphere, " explained Prof Bill Webber from New Mexico State University in Las Cruces.
Given the risks of aiming such a powerful beam of high-intensity radiation at an Earth ground station, as well as the cost of building billions of dollars in infrastructure to collect the energy in space, the efficiencies you can get from terrestrial solar power seem a safer bet--at least for now.
In recent years instrument makers have refined the therapy further with a technique called Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy.
Two of the three workers inside the plant received more than the lethal dose of seven sieverts (a sievert is the unit that measures the intensity of radiation's impact on the body).
In 2002 cancer doctors began prescribing a new service called intensity-modulated radiation therapy.
Once the cancerous area is precisely targeted, only the intensity of the laser radiation needs to be turned up in order to irradiate, or burn off, the tumor.
ENGADGET: Researchers develop femtosecond laser that can diagnose, blast cancerous tumors
That intensity would likely swamp the radiation shielding on a typical satellite, and the authors estimate that most would be rendered inoperable within a year after the storm.
FORBES: A Powerful Solar Storm Could Render Satellites Inoperable For Years
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