Traveling Beyond The Earth’s Magnetosphere

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What Does the Earth’s Magnetosphere Do?

The Earth’s magnetosphere is the magnetic field that surrounds and is dominated by the Earth. As early as 1600, the Earth was presumed to be a giant magnet. The name magnetosphere was given in 1959. The sun consists mainly of plasma, which is a collection of protons and electrons. Due to extreme temperatures, electrons are blasted out of their orbits from the sun. These particles – mainly hydrogen or helium – stream continuously from the sun into the solar system. They are called solar wind. The magnetosphere surrounding the Earth acts as a shield against the solar wind by preventing these particles from entering Earth’s atmosphere. Without the magnetosphere, these particles, along with the radiation accompanying them, would seriously threaten life on Earth.

Has Any Person Ever Traveled Beyond The Magnetosphere?

The farthest any human has gone into space is the moon, which is mostly outside the Earth’s magnetosphere. The world well remembers the Apollo 11 mission, conducted by NASA, when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, on July 20, 1969, became the first people to walk on an extraterrestrial body. Ten more followed in subsequent years, all part of various Apollo missions, but no one has gone farther. The dangers are too great outside of the protective magnetosphere surrounding the Earth’s magnetic field.

The magnetosphere, the area around the space controlled by the Earth’s magnetic field, surrounds us like a bubble. The magnetic field has a north pole and a south pole and is very similar to the magnetic field of a bar magnet. Solar winds bombard the magnetosphere, causing it to be comet shaped and even to develop a comet-like tail, called the magnetotail, in the downwind direction.

The Earth is not the only heavenly body with a magnetosphere. The sun and other planets in our solar system, Neptune, Jupiter, Mercury, Saturn and perhaps Mars, also have magnetospheres. Earth has the strongest one of the rocky planets. Venus, even though a rocky planet, has no magnetic field.

The magnetotail of Earth’s magnetosphere extends beyond the moon’s orbit, causing the moon to orbit through the magnetotail every month and to spend up to 25 percent of its orbit within the Earth’s magnetosphere. The moon enters the magnetotail three days before becoming full and crosses and exits the other side about six days later. Thus, when we see a full moon, we know we are seeing a moon that is inside the Earth’s magnetotail.

When the moon is going through the magnetotail, there can be dust storms and electrostatic discharge of very high voltage, particularly on the dark side, where there is no sunlight to keep the buildup of electron charges at a low level. Perhaps this has something to do with folklore about the full moon’s effect on animal and human behavior here on Earth.

The magnetosphere, which is where the satellites orbit, extends out from the Earth about 50,000 kilometers, or more than 31,000 miles. It is strongest close to the Earth and gets weaker as it extends farther into space and gets hit with the particles in solar wind. It a frontier where scientists study magnetic storms and Earth’s boundary with solar winds.

Solar wind is from the sun’s corona, the part of the sun’s outer atmosphere that is extremely hot, with temperatures greater than 1 million degrees Celsius (more than 180 million degrees Fahrenheit). The corona escapes the sun’s gravity and goes speeding out in all directions at an average of 400 kilometers per second, full of charged particles, past all the planets in the solar system.

The Earth’s magnetosphere protects us from most of these particles by trapping solar wind plasma, a mysterious form of space matter composed of these particles that can glow brightly and respond to electric and magnetic fields. Most of the plasma particles are trapped before they can penetrate the Earth’s atmosphere. However, some particles from the magnetotail get through to the Earth’s upper atmosphere and awe us with the polar light shows known as the aurora borealis.

Except for flights to the moon in the Apollo program, human space flights have not gone beyond “low Earth orbit,” which is between 100 and 1,240 miles above the Earth’s surface. The dangers beyond low Earth orbit are enormous. Radiation is the biggest danger. Radiation from large explosions in the sun’s atmosphere, called solar flares, which emit high-energy protons, not only poses dangers to the health and lives of the astronauts but can also affect the electronics of space craft. Galactic cosmic rays pose another kind of radiation danger. These very powerful rays generally come from the Milky Way Galaxy outside our solar system. They contain radioactive nuclei and travel almost at the speed of light.

The world beyond the protection of the Earth’s magnetosphere is dangerous, where only the intrepid few dare to go.

Resources About the Magnetosphere

Sounds of the Magnetosphere at the University of Iowa
NASA Lecture on the Magnetosphere by Dr. James L. Green
About the Magnetosphere by the Southwest Research Institute

Resource by Will

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