As we have explained in previous articles here from Mega Curioso, the earth's magnetic field acts as a kind of shield that surrounds our planet and offers protection against cosmic radiation and the action of solar storms, for example. Well, speaking of solar storms, a team of scientists found that a particularly powerful one caused a "crack" in the magnetosphere.

According to Bec Crew of Science Alert, the discovery came as a group of astronomers were analyzing data from a massive particle ejection that took place in the middle of last year - resulting in one of the largest geomagnetic storms ever recorded in recent decades.

Solar flare

Bec said on June 22, 2015, the GRAPES-3 muon telescope, the world's largest cosmic ray monitoring device, located in India, detected a massive ejection of particles that bombarded our planet for approximately two hours straight. .

The storm was ominous

The scientists found that the particles were ejected from the sun into a huge plasma cloud about 40 hours earlier and hit the Earth at an estimated speed of about 2.5 million km / h. As a result, we experienced the worst geomagnetic storm in recent years that resulted in disruption of radio signals in several countries of the Americas and spectacular northern lights in the northern hemisphere.

However, at the time, astronomers could not understand exactly what the real consequences of such a persistent "bombardment" of particles were. Now, as it turned out, the thing was so violent that the earth's magnetosphere not only suffered a kind of crack in its structure, it shrunk temporarily from 11 times the earth's radius to just four!

Violent bombardment

According to Bec, after analyzing the data collected by GRAPES-3 and conducting a series of simulations, scientists believe the solar storm was so intense that it caused a reconfiguration of the earth's magnetic field. As it were, the shrinking of the magnetosphere allowed low-energy cosmic rays to penetrate the atmosphere and cause chaos in radio systems.

Scheme showing the terrestrial magnetic field

And what's important now, more than a year after that? Well, dear reader, the discovery of astronomers reveals that the earth's magnetic field is more vulnerable than many people believe and can be weakened in certain situations - such as when a very intense solar storm cracks its structure, allowing radiation to pass through. through it and endanger life on the planet.

In addition, weakening can also occur when the sun's energy plasma deforms the earth's magnetic field, causing it to distend at the poles - which diminishes its ability to deflect cosmic rays. So what worries scientists is that these findings may all indicate that the magnetosphere is changing and becoming less efficient in some regions.

Evidence indicates that the Earth's magnetic field is changing and becoming weaker.

And the problem is that, as you know, solar storms are always happening - which means that even though the magnetosphere has already recovered from the crack caused by the last bombardment, it can be cracked again. What's worse is that there is not much to do about it, other than finding ways to avoid chaos (on satellite systems, power grids, etc.) when the sun casts a powerful new storm toward us.