Science & Technology
A group of scientists from Linköping University (Sweden), Jožef Stefan Institute (Slovenia), Russia's National University of Science and Technology MISiS and France's École Polytechnique have helped to disprove a widely-held theory about the Earth's magnetic field, RIA Novosti reported on Tuesday.
Along with the Earth's atmosphere, the magnetic field provides a defense for the Earth from the charged particles in cosmic rays. By deflecting the particles away from Earth, many are preventing from even hitting the atmosphere directly, ensuring that the planet's life-forms are protected.
In January 2015 scientists from the Carnegie Institution for Science and Rutgers University (US) published a paper in the journal Nature which appeared to complete a traditional theory about the source of our planet's magnetic field.
According to the traditional theory, the Earth's solid inner core spins and powers thermal convection of molten iron alloy in the Earth's outer core. This generates electric currents, which in turn produce magnetic fields.
However, in 2012 geophysicists in the UK published a supercomputer model which demonstrated that iron in the planet's core is more efficient at conducting heat than previously thought.
"Put simply, the paradox is that in this model, so much heat escaped from the core via conduction that there wasn't enough energy left over to fuel convection (when heat creates motion) in the liquid outer core. The implication: Earth's magnetic field shouldn't exist," LiveScience explained.
The 2015 paper appeared to overcome this conundrum, because it apparently proved the traditional model.
"There was a big problem in how you generate a magnetic field, and now, because of our results, that problem has basically gone away," study co-author Ron Cohen told LiveScience.
However, Cohen and co-authors Peng Zhang and K. Haule have now printed a retraction of their paper, based on experiments by an international team of scientists led by Professor in Theoretical Physics Igor Abrikosov.
"L. Pourovskii, J. Mravlje, S. Simak and I. Abrikosov could not reproduce our findings, which led us to re-examine our computations. We found an error of a factor of two that is due to our neglect of spin degeneracy (two electrons per band), which would halve the electron - electron resistivity," and increase the flow of electric current, they explained in their retraction.
As a result, the presence of the Earth's magnetic field remains as much a mystery as ever, representatives from Russia's National University of Science and Technology told RIA Novosti on Tuesday.
"The researchers from the US agreed with Abrikosov's group, and in April 2016 they retracted their article from the Nature journal. The classical theory has been disproved again," MISiS explained.
"Now scientists have to return to the calculations made in 2012, which show that heat convection generates the Earth's magnetic field. The thermal history of the planet remains an open discussion.
Reader Comments
If you consider that the long-supported model of stellar hydrogen suns is now on shaky ground along with the Einsteinian theories and the entire future of the planet's energy aka hydrogen fusion which has been 'on tap' for over 50 years yet still as far away as ever, the theory of our sun being iron is more of a threat than ever.
Clearly the iron in our sun and in probably all is the main factor in the energy produced leading to the transmutation of magnetic energy to kinetic energy NASA sees in the events surrounding the sun's cosmic energy meeting the Earth's magnetosphere.
Quite possibly this iron is the source of the planetary surface scarring so noticeable on Mars from plasma arcing. Indeed one wonders if this iron sun proposed by O Manuel, M Mozina, and others, is the cause of the 'thunderbolts' of ancient history and not a solar body incursion.
Could the magnetic force be increased by planetary and solar alignments? Is the cosmic gas cloud we are in sufficiently strong to produce a magnetic 'shade' of our sun seen in the sky? Will our often forecast 'doom' be a magnetic 'thunderbolt' hurled by our sun Sol? Will a HOT FLOW ANOMALY lash the planet with unimaginable bolts of lightening in plasma storm of unbelievable dimensions?
It's all theory, they have no idea how hot the Sun was 2.5 billion years ago and they only have theories of how the Earth is constructed .... they haven't got a clue where the Moon came from
I think the earths core is a plasma metallic condensate! Pierre Robatille has done some ground breaking research into the sun's core and he's convinced that the suns core is a plasma metallic condensate,so why not the earth as well?
I don't know what it means but if I search this in Google, the first 10 entries are all the same post, but under different SOTT articles
I'll be reading the following - thanks for the tip
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Thanks SOTT for this great article. Something that should be taken into account of course is the rsr.org/earth-and-mercury-rapid-magnetic-field-decay. Very rapid.
Is this another example of intentional or unintentional 'round robbing' the players(aka scientists) in this game?