Are you tired of worrying about shootings, politics, what the Kardashians are doing and being able to find free gum under your movie seat. So am I. So let’s find something new to think about, like magnetic fields. Our Earth’s magnetic field protects us from a serious condition known locally as death. The Sun gives us warmth from the cold of space and sometime too much more.
This is a diagram illustrating the Earth’s magnetic field close to us. This is what exists around every magnet. At school we couldn’t see the field until we shaked iron fillings on the paper above our little school magnet.
I never really thought about the Earth’s field except that it made the Northern Lights called aurora borealis. I’ve only seen them once when traveling in Minnesota. They made me realize that I was way down here. and the lights were way out there.
The field creates beautiful colors but the field is our protector from what the Sun constantly puts out.
The Sun creates the solar wind made of trillions of tons of charged particles like protons and electrons moving at millions of miles per hour. This is constantly occurring, but sometimes there is a burst directed at the Earth. This is the danger for our modern society which is based on electricity for energy and communication by cellphone or landlines. A big burst can damage or destroy electrical transmission lines, undersea cables, satellites, transformers and computers thus the web would have hardware problems. Here is a probable disruption.
The Sun goes through cycles of approximately 11 years when it magnetic field changes and there are more or less solar flares. This cycle is what allows social media rumors to spread that we are all going to die in a couple years. Bovine fecal matter abounds. The Sun has been going through these cycles a long time, even before TV was invented and will do so long after your great great grand kids have forgotten your name. Not to worry, the Sun will manage to carry on after you’re gone.
Thankfully, scientists are keeping watch on solar activity. They will look for solar flares and send warnings to politicians who may or may not believe in science. We’ve got telescopes up there allowing us to know what’s going to happen. That is what science is all about, learning then predicting. All these solar flares could be seriously disruptive for hours, days or longer. These are short term disruptions that can be overcome.
So the Earth’s magnetic field offers excellent protection now, but it really allowed and preserves LIFE and here’s how.
The field deflects the vast majority of the solar wind around and past the Earth. If the field was not here, the solar wind would smash into our atmosphere, very gradually stripping away our air. With a wispy atmosphere, breathing would be very, very difficult, but that is just the start. With no atmosphere to decrease their power, cosmic rays and X-rays would hit our surface with full force. You’d be getting a many centuries X-ray dosage in a few minutes. Skin would be toasty. Cancer, here we come, if able to live that long. After several million years our oceans would evaporate into space and we would look very much like Mars. You know all the tiny little meteor light streaks in the sky. With no sky to burn them up they will just rain down on us.
It is no exaggeration to view Earth’s atmosphere as the single dried outer layer of a large onion.
The ratio of atmosphere to the Earth is much thinner than that onion skin is to the onion. Without that thin layer to protect the surface, there would have been no life on Earth, ever. The aurora borealis reminds us that we live on the inside of a bubble, shielded by the magnetic field and preserved by our precious atmosphere.