(ORDO NEWS) — Earth‘s magnetic field is gradually weakening in the region of Africa and South America. This process causes technical disruptions on some satellites orbiting our planet.
Earth’s magnetic field protects humanity from cosmic radiation and supercharged particles of the Sun. It is generated by liquid metals in the core of the planet, which is located about 3,000 kilometers underground. Acting as a rotating conductor in a dynamo, the metal creates electric currents, which, in turn, generate our continuously changing electromagnetic field.
This field is far from static and varies both in strength and in direction. For example, recent studies have shown that the position of the north magnetic pole is changing rapidly. Over the past 200 years, it has lost about 9% of its strength on average around the world. And the area that formed between Africa and South America is called the South Atlantic Anomaly.
Scientists use ESA Swarm satellite data to better understand this anomaly. Swarm satellites are designed to identify and accurately measure the various magnetic signals that make up the Earth’s magnetic field.
Experts have suggested that the current weakening of the field is a sign that the Earth can move towards the inversion of the poles, that is, to a “rearrangement” of the North and South. Such events have already occurred in the history of the planet. Now the drop in intensity in the South Atlantic is within what is considered a normal level of fluctuations.
The mystery of the origin of the South Atlantic anomaly has not yet been solved. However, scientists know one thing for sure: observation of the magnetic field gives new knowledge about hardly understood processes occurring in the bowels of the Earth.
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