earth's spinning core causes magnetic field animation

As an editor with over 10 years of experience in science journalism she has previously written for Scholastic Classroom Magazines, MedPage Today and The Joint Institute for Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Hanneke Weitering is a multimedia journalist in the Pacific Northwest reporting on the future of aviation at FutureFlight.aero and Aviation International News and was previously the Editor for Spaceflight and Astronomy news here at. 30) in the journal Science Advances.Įmail Hanneke Weitering at or follow her. This study led by Grayver was the result of a collaboration among his colleagues in Zürich, the Technical University of Denmark (DTU Space), NASA and the University of Colorado Boulder.ĭetails of the study were published today (Sept. Grayver said that, in the coming years, his team hopes to study more geological phenomena 'such as mantle upwelling across midoceanic ridges and water content in the upper mantle using tidal magnetic signals.' The European Space Agency's Swarm mission, launched in 2013, will be useful for this type of research in the future as those satellites continue to collect high-quality data. But satellites 'help us tremendously to get a global view and check consistency of our theories,' Grayver said. It's possible to measure these properties of the Earth's interior without a satellite, through a process called 'magnetotelluric sounding,' which is done at the ocean floor.

'Above the, the colder, rigid lithosphere is more resistive, whereas the asthenosphere is significantly more conductive because of its higher temperatures,' the study's authors wrote.

The researchers believe that this jump in conductivity occurs at the boundary between Earth's lithosphere and a deeper layer known as the asthenosphere. Below that, the Earth's conductivity suddenly increases. By combining their satellite data with the models, the researchers determined that there is a layer of Earth's lithosphere and upper mantle about 45 miles (72 km) thick that is electrically resistive, meaning it doesn't conduct electric currents very well.

Earth's spinning core causes magnetic field animation