Mysterious geomagnetic field

Europe has deployed a new mission to discover the mystery of the Earth's magnetic field, and find out why the shield that protects the Earth seems to be weakening.

Last weekend, at Russia's Plesetsk space airport, the Rockot missile took only 91 minutes to place the trio of European scientific satellites on the designated gathering point near the pole, maintaining a height of 490km above the ground. These satellites - dubbed Alpha, Bravo, Charlie - have officially launched a mission for 4 years mapping geomagnetic fields and decoding the mysteries surrounding 'armor' to protect every creature on the surface. globe. Mission worth 280 million euros, Swarm cryptography , is the first project to map sources of emission as well as the strength of the earth's magnetic field, ie invisible bubbles that protect our planet from the deadly radiation from the sun and the universe.

Alpha, Bravo and Charlie trio in Swarm mission - (Photo: ESA)

The satellite participating Swarm mission was built at the factory of Astrium belonging to European space aerospace group EADS. Swarm is designed to trace other sources of the Earth's magnetic field, as well as to identify flows in the Earth's ionosphere that can interfere with the magnetic field originating from the Earth's core. To prevent the risk of satellites (weighing 472kg / unit) colliding at 490km altitude when traveling at about 7km / hour, engineers equipped a special mechanism to keep the distance between the guards fine. Hope experts Alpha, Bravo, Charlie can help them understand why geomagnetic fields are weakening to 15% over the past 200 years.

Mars once had a magnetic field, and its disappearance a few billion years ago was thought to be the main cause of the red planet's loss of atmosphere, turning into a cold, arid desert. The main source of geomagnetic fields lies deep in the planet's core, where superheated iron flows produce electric currents, which then produce magnetic fields, a process called 'dynamo' . The magnetic field extends a few thousand kilometers into space, creating an invisible bubble called a magnetosphere , which deflects dangerous particles of electricity flowing from the sun and other sources of the universe.

Based on the weakening magnetic field, earth experts predict that the protective shield of life is about to reverse. According to geological data, the reversal takes place every 250,000 years, but the last reversal was about 800,000 years ago."We need to know what will happen because it affects life on the planet's surface ," Reuters quoted mission director Rune Floberghagen of the European Space Agency. 'It affects animal behavior. It affects the navigation system. Influence on many practical things for all of us, not simply scientific research topics' , according to Floberghagen.

While it is not possible to predict the level of influence when the planet loses its protective shield, it is not difficult to predict that the consequences will be catastrophic. The satellites, which play a key role in the telecommunications network, may be stripped naked in front of the solar wind. Meanwhile, the oil and gas industry uses magnetic field-based data for oil drilling. Therefore, Swarm is an extremely important mission, not only for Europe but also for the benefit of the whole world, according to Reuters, Director of European Space Agency Jean-Jacques.'We cannot live on this planet without that important barrier,' he said.