If you want to be dazzled by spectacular things Aurora Display, your best bet is to skywatch near the Arctic. But that wasn’t the case 41,000 years ago when the aurora wandered toward the equator due to the collapse of the Earth’s magnetic field.
During this geomagnetic disturbance, known as the Rashamp event or Rashamp excursion, the north-south magnetism of the planet weakened, magnetic field It tilted around that axis and was reduced to a fraction of its previous strength. This weakens the magnetic force that normally directs the flow of high-energy solar particles toward the North and South Pole, where it interacts with atmospheric gas and illuminates the night sky as an aurora.
It took about 1300 years for the magnetic field to return to its original strength and tilt. Meanwhile, the aurora has lost its way to latitudes near the equator, which is not normally seen, scientists reported at an annual meeting on Thursday (December 16). Of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) held online with New Orleans.
At the AGU conference, presenter Agnit Mukhopadhyay, a PhD candidate at the University of Michigan’s School of Climate and Space Sciences, said at the AGU conference that this period of intense geomagnetic changes would affect the living conditions of parts of the Earth’s atmosphere. He said it may have shaped.
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Of earth The magnetic field is created by the agitation of the melted core of our planet. Metal sloshing near the center of the Earth and planetary rotation combine to create magnetic poles on the north and south surfaces. Field lines connect the poles with a curved arc. They form a protected zone, also known as the magnetosphere, which protects the planet from radioactive particles from space. According to NASA.. The magnetosphere also protects the Earth’s atmosphere from particles that are worn away by the solar wind and blown out by the sun.
On the side of the Earth facing the Sun (standing on the arrow of the solar wind), the magnetosphere is compressed to about 6-10 times the radius of the Earth. According to NASA, on the night side of the Earth, the magnetosphere can flow into space and reach hundreds of Earth lengths. But about 41,000 years ago, the intensity of the magnetosphere plummeted “to almost 4% of modern values” and leaned sideways, Mukhopadhyay said. “Several studies in the past have predicted that the magnetosphere has completely disappeared on the Japanese side,” he added.
Mukhopadhyay and his colleagues discovered this result using daisy chains of different models. They first began with data on planetary magnetism from ancient rock deposits, Volcano Data to the simulation of the magnetic field during the Laschamp event. They combine this data with a simulation of the interaction between the magnetosphere and the solar wind and send the results to another model, the parameters of the solar particles that produce the aurora (ion pressure, density, temperature.
This is the first time scientists have used this technology “to simulate the Earth’s space system and predict the composition of the magnetosphere along with the location of the aurora,” Mukhopadhyay said.
The team discovered that even if the magnetosphere shrank to about 3.8 times the radius of the Earth during the Rashamp event, it would not disappear completely. During this period of diminished magnetic strength, the previously located north-south poles moved toward equatorial latitudes, followed by the aurora.
“The geomagnetic tilt was quite distorted from the geographic poles,” Mukhopadhyay said. “This caused the aurora precipitation to follow the poles and move from the geographic polar regions of the Earth to latitudes in the equatorial direction.”
Previous studies have suggested that the Laschamps event may have affected the habitability of prehistoric Earth by plunging the planet into an environmental crisis, and the new model suggests that such results are “extremely possible.” “Is high,” Mukhopadhyay reported. Earlier this year, other researchers discovered that the weakened magnetosphere was easily infiltrated by the solar wind, leading to ozone layer depletion, climate catastrophe, and extinction. Live science previously reported..
Their findings do not establish a causal relationship between changes in Rashamp’s magnetic field and serious ecological effects on Earth, but models may establish such a link in the future. It provided insights for the study, said Mukhopadhyay.
Originally published on Live Science.
41,000 years ago, the aurora was burning near the equator
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