Magnetic storms: A window to the past

Audrey Schillings recently defended her doctoral thesis about atmospheric loss from Earth and how it varies with solar wind conditions. Audrey was employed at the Swedish Institute of Space Physics and enrolled at Luleå ...

Solar weather has real, material effects on Earth

On Sep. 1, 1859, solar astronomer Richard Carrington witnessed sunspots that suddenly and briefly flashed brightly before they disappeared. Just before dawn the next day, auroras erupted over most of the Earth, reaching as ...

Geomagnetic jerks finally reproduced and explained

The Earth's magnetic field experiences unpredictable, rapid, and intense anomalies that are known as geomagnetic jerks. The mechanisms behind this phenomenon had remained a mystery until the recent discovery of a CNRS researcher. ...

Earth's magnetic poles could start to flip. What happens then?

As Earth's magnetic shield fails, so do its satellites. First, our communications satellites in the highest orbits go down. Next, astronauts in low-Earth orbit can no longer phone home. And finally, cosmic rays start to bombard ...

Earth's magnetic field is not about to reverse, study finds

A study of the most recent near-reversals of the Earth's magnetic field by an international team of researchers, including the University of Liverpool, has found it is unlikely that such an event will take place anytime soon.

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