A huge ‘dent’ in the Earth’s magnetic field spreads across South America and could cause the failure of some satellites and telecommunications.
This Wednesday the NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) warned of a anomaly in the magnetic field of our planet that could affect telecommunications as we know them.
It’s about a weak point in the Earth’s magnetic field that spans South America and a region of the Atlantic Ocean. This anomaly, known to the special agency as WEATHER (South Atlantic Anomaly) has been expanding for more than a decade.
The magnetic field is one of the conditions that makes life on Earth possible. It works as a protective shield against the charged particles that come from the Sun. However, NASA found that in the dent zone, these particles are closer to the surface than on the rest of the planet.
And although scientists do not observe any alteration in daily life that develops on the surface (and they estimate a minimal risk in the next few years), they detected that this dent is not only dividing into two lobes, it is also growing more and more westward.
Besides radiation damage that cause failures in satellites, the agency intends to learn more about how the SAA was formed with the intention of studying the mechanisms involved in the composition of the Earth’s magnetic field.
For at least a century, it has been known that the Earth’s magnetic field is constantly changing, due to different phenomena such as the iron ocean in the core of our planet and the inclination of its axis. It has been shown that this protective shield varies in intensity and even changes the exact location of the magnetic poles year after year, at a rate of about 10 kilometers annually during the 20th century.
The Earth’s magnetic field also makes the operation of compasses possible, guide the migration of animals and traps charged particles from the Sun at a safe distance from Earth, in a pair of areas of the magnetosphere called van allen belt.
Better understanding if SAA can affect the satellites that make the vast majority of communications on Earth possible is the agency’s next step. If so, it is likely that the technology that protects both satellites and space probes and manned missions in space will have to take a step forward to avoid solar radiation.
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