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Business News/ Industry / The earth’s magnetic field’s got a big hole
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The earth’s magnetic field’s got a big hole

The earth’s magnetic field’s got a big hole

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Los Angeles: Recent satellite observations have found the largest breach yet seen in the magnetic field that protects earth from most of the sun’s violent blasts, researchers reported on Tuesday.

The discovery was made last summer by Themis, a fleet of five small satellites from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa).

Scientists have long known that the earth’s magnetic field, which guards against severe space weather, is similar to a drafty old house that lets in violent eruptions of charged particles from the sun. Such a breach can cause brilliant auroras or disrupt satellite and ground communications.

Observations from Themis show the earth’s magnetic field occasionally develops two cracks, allowing solar wind—a stream of charged particles spewing from the sun at 1.6 million kph—to penetrate the earth’s upper atmosphere.

Last year, Themis calculated a layer of solar particles to be at least 6,400km thick in the outermost part of the earth’s magnetosphere, the largest tear of the protective shield found so far. “It was growing rather fast," Themis scientist Marit Oieroset of the University of California, Berkeley, told an American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.

Such breaches are temporary, and the one observed last year lasted about an hour, Oieroset said. Solar flares are a potential danger to astronauts in orbit but generally are not a risk to people on the surface of the earth. The research was funded by Nasa and the National Science Foundation.

Scientists initially believed the greatest solar breach occurred when the earth’s and sun’s?magnetic?fields are pointed in opposite directions. But data from Themis found that 20 times more solar wind passed into the earth’s protective shield?when?the?magnetic fields were aligned.

The Themis results could have bearing on how scientists predict the severity of solar storms and their effects on power grids, airline and military communications and satellite signals. The Themis satellites were launched to find the source of brief powerful geomagnetic disturbances in the earth’s atmosphere.

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Published: 17 Dec 2008, 11:36 PM IST
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