A NASA rocket launched from near the North Pole has officially detected something first hypothesized more than 60 years ago: an ambipolar electric field sheathing the planet.<\/p>\n
According to an agency release<\/a>, the field\u2019s existence was proven with measurements by the Endurance mission, a rocket launched to measure the planet\u2019s global electric potential. The electric potential was expected to have a very weak effect on charged particles in the atmosphere, making it difficult to detect. However, the property may also be a reason<\/a> life as we know it manages on Earth when we\u2019ve not spotted it anywhere else.<\/p>\n Endurance launched from Ny-\u00c5lesund in Svalbard, Norway, in May 2022, after being delayed due to \u201capocalyptic winds and white-out conditions,\u201d as one team member put it<\/a>. It was a fitting start to the mission, given its namesake is the ill-fated vessel of Sir Ernest Shackleton that sank in 1914 after being stuck in Antarctic ice. The wreck of the Endurance<\/em><\/a> was discovered in 2022 at the bottom of the Weddell Sea.<\/p>\n \u201cSvalbard is the only rocket range in the world where you can fly through the polar wind and make the measurements we needed,\u201d said Suzie Imber, a space physicist at the University of Leicester and co-author of the paper, in the NASA release.<\/p>\n Endurance achieved an altitude of 477 miles (768 kilometers) on its 20-minute flight before splashing down in the Greenland Sea.\u00a0Now, the Endurance mission team has confirmed there is an electric field, the properties of which were reported in a paper published<\/a> in Nature<\/em> yesterday.<\/p>\n The rocket measured a change in electric potential of just .55 volts on its trip, indicating a weak electric field may be responsible for the polar wind, an outflow of particles from Earth\u2019s atmosphere into space.<\/p>\n \u201cA half a volt is almost nothing\u2014it\u2019s only about as strong as a watch battery,\u201d said Glyn Collinson, principal investigator of the Endurance mission and lead author of the paper, in the same release. \u201cBut that\u2019s just the right amount to explain the polar wind.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n The electric field is ambipolar\u2014not because the wind exists at both poles, but because the tugging between electrons and ions is going both ways. The much-more-massive ions yank the electrons down towards Earth\u2019s surface, while electrons pull ions upwards as they wriggle in the direction of space.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n \u201c<\/span><\/span>We infer that [the field\u2019s control of the ionosphere] increases <\/span>the supply of cold O<\/span>+<\/span> ions to the magnetosphere by more than 3,800%, in which other <\/span>mechanisms such as wave\u2013particle interactions can heat and further accelerate them <\/span>to escape velocity,\u201d the team wrote in the paper. \u201cThe electrostatic field of Earth is strong enough by itself to drive <\/span>the polar wind<\/span>\u00a0and is probably the origin of the cold H<\/span>+<\/span> ion population<\/span>\u00a0that <\/span>dominates much of the magnetosphere.\u201d In other words, this newly confirmed electrical field is a key driver in propelling ions out of Earth\u2019s atmosphere and into space, shaping the composition of the magnetosphere.<\/span><\/p>\n The discovery of the electric field could help explain planetary evolution, too; worlds like Venus and Mars\u2014now inhospitable\u2014were once more like Earth. Venus\u2019 hot, noxious atmosphere is thought to be the result of a runaway greenhouse gas effect. Mars\u2019 arid wasteland once had lakes of liquid water on its surface. The very slight electric field on Earth may have shaped the evolution of the planet\u2019s atmosphere, keeping our world livable while our neighbors became harsh.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n Trending Products<\/strong>
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