A new scientific study revealed that
the region of magnetic anomalies in the South Atlantic, where the intensity of
the magnetic field decreases due to mysterious reasons.
The Earth's magnetic field is essential to life on our planet. It plays the role of a powerful shield that protects living things from cosmic radiation and charged solar particles.
The magnetic field is often depicted as a bipolar magnet tilted about 11 degrees from the axis of rotation.
But the magnetic anomalies observed
by scientists in a vast area between Africa and South America seeing a decrease
in magnetic density shows that the Earth's magnetic field is actually more
complex than scientists previously thought.
Although scientists know that the
Earth's magnetic field is created by the movement of molten iron that
circulates in the outer nucleus like the dynamo of a bicycle, generating
electrical currents that in turn create the magnetic field, the magnetic
depressions and how they happen represent a puzzle for them, and the time and
place of their occurrence cannot be predicted.
But some scientists associate the
regions with magnetic anomalies and another phenomenon is the inversion of the
Earth's magnetic field when the north magnetic pole of the earth becomes in its
south and the south pole in its north.
Unlike the geographic North Pole,
which is in a fixed location, scientists have observed since 1831 that the
magnetic north location is changing with time, and that it is moving slowly
from the Canadian Arctic regions towards Siberia.
This displacement has gained since
the nineties of the last century, a speed of between 50 and 60 km per year,
compared to less than 15 km in the past, which means the need to update the
global magnetic model repeatedly, which is vital for navigation on smart phones
for example.
Research has shown that the
reflection of the Earth's magnetic field occurs every few hundreds of thousands
of years, but it is not entirely clear how these reflections can be linked to
what is currently happening with anomalies in the South Atlantic Ocean,
scientists say.
Some scientists have assumed that this could be the result of a huge reservoir
of dense rocks beneath Africa called the Great African Low Speed Zone.
At the moment, there is no cause for
concern, the researchers say, as the European Space Agency indicates that the
most significant impacts today are largely limited to technical faults that can
occur to satellites and spacecraft.
But that does not mean that the
importance of this magnetic anomaly should be underestimated. In the past two
centuries, the Earth's magnetic field has lost about 9% of its strength on
average.