An invisible, weak energy field wrapped around our planet Earth has finally been detected and measured. It's called the ambipolar field, an electric field first hypothesized more than 60 years ago, and its discovery will change the way we study and understand the behavior and evolution of our beautiful, ever-changing world. "Any planet with an atmosphere should have an ambipolar field," of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.
"Now that we've finally measured it, we can begin learning how it's shaped our planet as well as others over time." Earth isn't just a blob of dirt sitting inert in space. It's surrounded by all sorts of fields.
There's the gravity field. We don't know a lot , especially considering how ubiquitous it is, but without gravity we wouldn't have a planet. Gravity also helps keep the atmosphere snug against the surface.
There's also , which is generated by the rotating, conducting material in Earth's interior, converting kinetic energy into the magnetic field that spins out into space. This protects our planet from the and radiation, and also helps to keep the atmosphere from blowing away. In 1968, a phenomenon that we couldn't have noticed until the space age.
Spacecraft flying over Earth's poles detected a escaping from Earth's atmosphere. The best explanation for this was a third, electric energy field. "It's called the ambipolar field and it's an agent of chaos.
It counters gravity, and it strips particles off into space," . "But we've never been able to me.