Scientists create the sound of the Earth’s magnetic circuit 41 Thousand Years ago

Jakarta –

An animation using data from the European Space Agency (ESA) allows us to hear a ‘soundscape’ of the Earth’s magnetic field being disrupted during the Laschamp event.

People may not worry too much about the Earth’s magnetic field, assuming that we don’t need to rely on a compass for navigation. The magnetosphere usually stays there, protecting the surface of the Earth from particles cut from the Sun, and sometimes creating amazing auroras. However, the Earth’s magnetic field is not as strong as you think.

“We know that the magnetic field has weakened by about 9% of the global average over the past 200 years. However, paleomagnetic studies show that it is the strongest field in the last 100 thousand years, and twice as strong as the average. of a million years,” explained NASA.

“Since its precise discovery by British Royal Navy officer and polar explorer Sir James Clark Ross in 1831, the position of the magnetic north pole has gradually shifted to the north-west by more than 1,100 kilometres, and the forward speed increased, from approx. 16 kilometers per year to about 55 kilometers per year,” explained NASA, quoted from IFL Science.

The poles can reverse over hundreds or thousands of years, and this can happen randomly, with periods ranging from 10 thousand years to 50 million years or more.

The last magnetic pole reversal last occurred about 780 thousand years ago, but more recently, about 41 thousand years ago, the Earth experienced the Laschamp event.

By studying the magnetization of sediment cores taken from that time, scientists have identified that the magnetic field changed during this time.

“The reverse polarity field geometry, with field lines pointing in opposite directions compared to the current configuration, only lasted for about 440 years, and was associated with a field strength that was only a quarter of the day’s field strength today,” said the German GFZ Research Center for Geosciences, Norbert Nowaczyk, who studied the event, in a statement in 2012.

“The change in polarity only lasted 250 years. In terms of geological timescales, that’s very fast,” he said.

It was this event that scientists at the Technical University of Denmark and the German GFZ Research Center for Geosciences chose to turn into an audio and visual treat. Using data from ESA’s Swarm mission and elsewhere, the team created images to show Earth’s magnetic field during the Laschamp event.

As well as mapping the movement of magnetic field lines, the team created a soundscape of natural sounds, such as falling rocks and snapping wood. The result is a rather scary sound that you can hear in the video below.

[Gambas:Youtube]

Despite claims that the event is linked to the extinction of megafauna in Australia and the extinction of Neanderthals due to changes in the Earth’s climate, some experts are skeptical, point out that this event is inconsistent with temperature evidence from ice cores.

(rns/rns)