NASA Discovers Earth’s Hidden Electrical Field After Searching For 60 Years
Spacecraft flying over Earth’s North and South Poles have detected a stream of particles flowing from Earth’s atmosphere into space since the late 1960s. Some degree of an outflow of particles, referred to as the “polar winds,” was expected by theorists, and was likened to steam evaporating from a pot of water. However, the observed polar wind was different, in that many particles within it were cold, with no signs of being heated, yet traveling at supersonic speeds.
“Something had to be drawing these particles out of the atmosphere,” remarked Glyn Collinson, principal investigator of Endurance at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and lead author of the recent paper.
The “something” scientists hypothesized as being the cause was an electric field, generated at the subatomic scale. The electric field was thought to be extremely weak, felt only over hundreds of miles. However, limits in technology kept anyone from being able to confirm its existence. That changed in 2016, when Collinson and his team began working on a new instrument they believed was up to the task.
The team determined the instruments, dubbed Endurance, were best suited for a suborbital rocket launched in the Arctic. The scientists chose Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago a few hundred miles from the North Pole and home to the northernmost rocket range in the world, to launch the instruments.
“Svalbard is the only rocket range in the world where you can fly through the polar wind and make the measurements we needed,” explained Suzie Imber, a space physicist at the University of Leicester, UK, and co-author of the paper.
The rocket launched on May 11, 2022, and reached an altitude of 477.23 miles, splashing down just 19 minutes later in the Greenland Sea. It collected data across a 322-mile altitude range, measuring a change in electric potential of only 0.55 volts.
“A half a volt is almost nothing — it’s only about as strong as a watch battery,” remarked Collinson. “But that’s just the right amount to explain the polar wind.”
Team member Alex Glocer explained hydrogen atoms, the most abundant type of particle in the polar wind, experiences an outward force from the field 10.6 times stronger than gravity. Glocer noted that is more than enough to counter gravity. It is also enough to launch them upward into space at supersonic speeds.
Collinson described the process as being like “this conveyor belt, lifting the atmosphere into space.” The team, and other scientists, believe the electric field may have continuously shaped the evolution of Earth’s atmosphere in ways only now scientists can begin to explore.
“Any planet with an atmosphere should have an ambipolar field,”: Collinson remarked. “Now that we’ve finally measured it, we can begin learning how it’s shaped our planet as well as others over time.”
The complete study on the newly detected ambipolar electric field can be found in the journal Nature.
