Earth’s magnetic subject is older than beforehand thought: Swiss scientists

Scientists on the Swiss federal know-how institute ETH Zurich have reconstructed the historical past of the Earth’s magnetic subject. In collaboration with a Chinese workforce, they present within the journal Nature that the protecting magnetic subject already existed greater than a billion years in the past, a lot sooner than beforehand thought.

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Using advanced pc simulations, the authors have been in a position to display for the primary time that a completely liquid Earth core, because it existed earlier than the crystallisation of the internal core, might additionally generate a steady magnetic subject.

The work was based mostly on a mannequin that reproduces the dynamics of the Earth’s inside below sensible bodily situations. The calculations have been carried out partially on the Piz Daint supercomputer in Lugano, southern Switzerland.

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“Until now, no one had been able to carry out such calculations under such correct physical conditions,” Yufeng Lin, the lead writer of the research, is quoted as saying in a press launch on Thursday. In his view, the viscosity of the Earth’s core doesn’t have a decisive affect on the processes by which the magnetic subject is shaped.

Protection in opposition to cosmic rays

The Earth’s magnetic subject protects the planet from dangerous cosmic rays and is subsequently a central think about life on Earth, each within the geological previous and in trendy civilisation.

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According to the ETH Zurich, this new information couldn’t solely assist us to raised perceive the Earth’s historic historical past, but in addition permit us to attract conclusions concerning the magnetic fields of different celestial our bodies, such because the Sun or Jupiter.

In the long run, it’s important to grasp the mechanisms behind the formation and modification of the Earth’s magnetic subject. This is especially vital in mild of current observations, such because the speedy shift of the North Magnetic Pole in the direction of the geographic North Pole in current a long time.

Translated from French with DeepL/gw