(April 24, 2024)
The age of the Earthâs magnetic field remains under question in part because we donât fully understand what causes it today. We know it is a product of movements in the molten outer core, whose high iron content turns convection currents into a dynamo, and these currents in turn are produced by the solidification of the inner core.
(April 2018)
Using constraints from experiments, simulations, and theory, we show that spontaneous crystallization in a homogeneous liquid iron alloy at Earth‘s core pressures requires a critical supercooling of order 1000 K, which is too large to be a plausible mechanism for the origin of Earth‘s inner core. We consider mechanisms that can lower the nucleation barrier substantially. Each has caveats, yet the inner core exists: this is the nucleation paradox.
(February 9, 2018)
„Everyone, ourselves included, seemed to be missing this big problem,“ study author Steven Hauck, a professor of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, said in a statement. Namely, they were missing „that metals don‘t start crystallizing instantly unless something is there that lowers the energy barrier a lot.“
In chemistry, this extra energy is known as the nucleation barrier: the point at which a compound visibly changes its thermodynamic phase.
(…)
In their paper, the researchers proposed one possibility: Perhaps a massive nugget of solid metal alloy dropped from the mantle and plunged into the liquid core.
(June 11, 2026)
The observation provides new insights into the behaviour of the liquid outer core, which plays a key role in generating Earthâs magnetic field. Without this magnetic shield, the planet would be dangerously exposed to solar radiation.
Researchers at the University of Edinburgh checked ground observations and satellite data between 1997 and 2025. They report in The Journal of Studies of Earthâs Deep Interior, that in 2010, a broad region of iron-rich fluid beneath the equatorial Pacific switched from moving weakly westwards to strongly eastwards.
(April 16, 2016)
In this paper, we focus on the effects of stellar rotation on the evolution of the planetary orbit and on the impact of the changes of the planetary orbit on the rotation of the star.
(January 19, 2018)
As our sun gets older, it‘s losing mass, and so its gravitational pull becomes weaker. As a result, the orbits of all the planets in our solar system are expanding, not unlike „the waistband of a couch potato in midlife,“ according to a new NASA press statement.
A team of researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Maryland and the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center has shown that the aging sun is behaving according to Albert Einstein‘s theory of general relativity.
(January 19, 2018)
To study the dynamics of our aging star, @NASASun researchers have enlisted Mercury, the smallest, innermost planet in the solar system. See how: go.nasa.gov/2DsuhTT
A leap second (sometimes called intercalary second)[1] is a one-second adjustment occasionally applied to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), to accommodate the difference between International Atomic Time (TAI), as measured precisely by atomic clocks, and observed solar time (UT1), which varies due to irregularities and long-term slowdown in the Earth‘s rotation.
(…)
After 1972, both clocks have been ticking in SI seconds, so the difference between their displays at any time is 10 seconds plus the total number of leap seconds that have been applied to UTC as of that time; as of 2024, 27 leap seconds have been applied to UTC, so the difference is 10 + 27 = 37 seconds. The most recent leap second was on December 31, 2016.
Die Erde rotiert minimal langsamer, als bei der Definition der Sekunde zugrunde gelegt wurde; ein tatsÀchlicher mittlerer Sonnentag dauert daher um Sekundenbruchteile lÀnger als 86.400 Sekunden.
(…)
Im Jahr 1972 betrug die Differenz zwischen UTC und TAI vor EinfĂŒhrung der Schaltsekunde bereits 10 Sekunden, heute liegt sie bei 37 Sekunden.
(June 7, 2026)
Earthâs rotation is gradually slowing as climate change melts glaciers and polar ice sheets, redistributing water across the planet and subtly lengthening the day. According to new research from the University of Vienna and ETH ZĂŒrich, the current increase in day length â 1.33 milliseconds per century â is unprecedented over at least the past 3.6 million years. Itâs a new measure of how profoundly human-driven warming is affecting the Earth system, even as only 48% of Americans believe climate change is the result of human activity.
(…)
Researchers reconstructed changes in day length over the past 3.6 million years using fossil remains of benthic foraminifera â single-celled marine microorganisms on the seafloor â and advanced machine-learning techniques.
(July 3, 2026)
For all the mediaâs huffing and puffing over western Europeâs âclimate-change heatwave,â the planet cooled in June.
UAHâs satellite-based lower troposphere record has June 2026 at +0.46C above the norm, down from +0.53C in May â a clear monthly fall all while headlines tried to turn one regional European hot spell into proof of a planetary catastrophe.
According to a World Weather Attribution report â and dutifully recycled by the usual activist rags â western Europeâs recent heatwave was âimpossible without the climate crisis.â
Reuters led with the same line, adding that the âsoaring night-time temperaturesâ were made 100 times more likely. The Guardian went further, calling it the âworst ever and impossible without climate crisis,â and claiming the heat was âonly possible because of fossil-fuel burning.â Euronews warned that âclimate change is running rampant,â while El PaĂs spelled out the sermon in its headline: âItâs not just hot, itâs climate change.â Etc. Etc. Etc.
The European heat was real. But it was weather. It was circulation. That is what blocking highs do.
Overall, the planet cooled 0.07C in June.
The northern lights are caused by the solar wind, a stream of charged particles from the sun that interacts with Earthâs magnetic field. As charged particles strike Earthâs magnetic field, they accelerate down its magnetic field lines at the north and south poles, exciting particles in the atmosphere to create ovals of green and red.
(July 19, 2024)
The current solar cycle, named Cycle 25 because it is the 25th since 1755 when extensive recording of solar sunspot activity began, started in 2019.
It is not expected to end for another six years but the first signs that the next solar cycle is beginning have been spotted by researchers from the University of Birmingham and presented at the Royal Astronomical Society‘s National Astronomy Meeting in Hull.
(February 12, 2026)
Scientists call the current cycle Solar Cycle 25, the 25th numbered cycle since recordkeeping began in the 1700s. Even though it may feel like the northern lights have been more common in recent years, Solar Cycle 25 ranks among the lowest of the past 126 years.
(…)
Earthâs magnetic field has been slowly weakening for more than a century, which means our natural shield isnât quite as strong as it used to be. That doesnât create solar storms, but it can change how much of that energy actually makes it through when a strong one hits.
(December 2009)
Abstract. The heliosphere is the space within which the solar wind dominates and the solar interplanetary magnetic field prevails. Its boundary is determined by the balance between stellar and solar winds. Owing to the present reduction in the solar wind pressure, one would expect that the stellar wind would push the heliosphere inward leading to its shrinkage. In this paper we calculate the extent of the heliosphere at different solar wind status. Backward estimation of the extent of the heliosphere since 1890 is done. It is found that the heliosphere oscillated between 75 and 125 AU between 1890 – 2010. Most important is the forecast of the shrinkage and oscillations of the heliosphere and their implications on the earth. The shrinkage of the heliosphere would allow more invasions of cosmic rays to the earth and planets, increased cloud cover and a cooler Earth.
(…)
1.4 Prediction of the State of solar Activity During The Next Few Decades
Weak solar cycles occur at the bottom of Wolf-Gleissberg cycles. They tend to occur in series of 3-4 cycles. A single weak cycle also occurs in between the two maximums of Wolf-Gleissberg cycle. Since the last weak solar cycles occurred around 1900 while the previous ones occurred around 1800 then the newly started cycle 24 should be a weak solar cycle. However, owing to the 200-years de Verie cycle of the sun, it is more likely that the status of the coming solar activity would be something like those weak cycles around 1800 as shown in Fig 1. Svalgaard (2005) also predicted that cycle 24 would be the lowest so far in the past 100 years with the maximum sunspot number around 75.
(March 9, 2022)
This complex environment surrounds the planets and ultimately has a crucial effect on the formation, evolution, and destiny of planetary systems. For one thing, our heliosphere acts as a giant shield, protecting the planets from galactic cosmic radiation. Earth is additionally shielded by its own magnetic field, the magnetosphere, which protects us not only from solar and cosmic particle radiation but also from erosion of the atmosphere by the solar wind. Planets without a shielding magnetic field, such as Mars and Venus, are exposed to such processes and have evolved differently.
NASA‘s studies of the heliosphere include research into: how the solar wind behaves near Earth; what causes and sustains magnetic and electric fields around other planets; how does the heliosphere interact with the interstellar medium; what do the boundaries of the heliosphere look like; what is the origin and evolution of the solar wind and the interstellar cosmic rays; and what contributes to the habitability of exoplanets.
(June 1981)
This paper describes in detail how we are led to the first approximation expression for the solar wind-magnetosphere energy coupling function É, which correlates well with the total energy consumption rate U T of the magnetosphere. It is shown that É is the primary factor which controls the time development of magnetospheric substorms and storms. The finding of this particular expression É indicates how the solar wind couples its energy to the magnetosphere; the solar wind and the magnetosphere constitute a dynamo. In fact, the power P generated by the dynamo can be identified as É by using a dimensional analysis. Furthermore, the finding of É indicates that the magnetosphere is closer to a directly driven system than to an unloading system which stores the generated energy before converting it to substorm and storm energies.
(January 13, 2026)
Coining the term ânear-Earth astrophysics,â Fasel has devoted much of his career to investigating solar-terrestrial interactions between the Sun and Earth, using the aurora borealis to obtain clues regarding the coupling mechanisms between the solar wind and the Earthâs terrestrial magnetic field.
âStars have winds,â says Fasel. âAnd this includes our Sun. While solar wind is a relatively continuous stream of particles that interact with the Earthâs magnetic field, the Sun can also produce powerful solar storms. These storms expel billions of charged particles [plasma] coupled to magnetic fields, called coronal mass ejections, which bang up into the Earthâs magnetic field.â
The Earthâs magnetic field lines, Fasel explains, âact like wiresâ on which these particles travel down into the Earthâs upper atmosphere, specifically the ionosphere. The aurora is an end result of this interaction, where high-energy electrons collide with oxygen to produce green light, while those of lower energy produce a raspberry-red color.
(May 20, 2020)
Over the last 200 years, the magnetic field has lost around 9% of its strength on a global average. A large region of reduced magnetic intensity has developed between Africa and South America and is known as the South Atlantic Anomaly.
(May 22, 2020)
According to the European Space Agency (ESA), the magnetic field has lost around 9 percent of its strength over the preceding two centuries. One section of the magnetic field has been found to have weakened considerably since 1970.
This patch, called the South Atlantic Anomaly, sits between Africa and South America. Over the last 50 years, it has grown and moved farther west at a rate of roughly 12 miles per year. However, in the last five years, part of the anomaly appears to have split off into a cell which the ESA calls a „second center of minimum intensity“ located southwest of Africa.
(29.3.2018)
The strength of Earthâs main magnetic field is currently about 29.5 microteslas, down 5 microteslas, or 14 percent from its strength three centuries ago.
We know this. There is no question of this.
(August 2008)
Correlations between geomagnetic-field and climate parameters have been suggested repeatedly, but possible links are controversially discussed. Here we test if weak (Earth-strength) magnetic fields can affect climatically relevant properties of seawater. We found the solubility of air in seawater to be by 15% lower under reduced magneticfield (20 mT) compared to normal field conditions (50 mT). The magnetic-field effect on CO2 solubility is twice as large, from which we surmise that geomagnetic field variations modulate the carbon exchange between atmosphere and ocean. A 1% reduction in magnetic dipole moment may release up to ten times more CO2 from the surface ocean than is emitted by subaerial volcanism.
(December 30, 2016)
Earthâs magnetic field is built up from many contributing sources ranging from the planetâs core to the magnetosphere in space. Untangling and identifying the different sources allows geomagnetic scientists to gather information about the individual processes that combine to create the full field.
One contributor is the ocean. But how do the tides affect Earthâs magnetic field? Seawater is an electrical conductor, and therefore interacts with the magnetic field. As the tides cycle around the ocean basins, the ocean water essentially tries to pull the geomagnetic field lines along. Because the salty water is a good, but not great, conductor, the interaction is relatively weak. The strongest component is from the regular lunar tide that happens about twice per day (actually 12.42 hours).
Itâs not the world order that has failed the Palestinians. Itâs the world.