The Earth and the incredible discovery of the third energy field that surrounds it and changes how we understand it
The Endurance rocket was able to discover a force that had been theorized for decades which will help expand our knowledge of the Earth and other planets.
Humans believe they know everything about their surroundings, yet something like the planet Earth on which we live continues to hide a multitude of mysteries that never cease to surprise us. Until now, two energy fields created by the planet itself were known, but after more than 60 years of searching, a third field, known as ambipolar, has been found thanks to NASA’s Endurance rocket that was launched in May 2022 from Svalbard, an island north of Norway.
The fields created by planet Earth are as follows:
Gravitational field: It is responsible for maintaining our atmosphere and if there were not enough gravity it would go into space.
Magnetic field: The shield that protects planet Earth from the solar wind, the stream of charged particles released by the sun.
Ambipolar field: Counteracts gravity and ejects particles into space. According to scientists, it is as fundamental to the way our planet works as the other two fields.
A historic discovery for science
Space physicist Suzie Imber of the University of Leicester in the UK, co-author of the study on the discovery published in the journal Nature, said that “Svalbard is the only rocket field in the world where you can fly through the polar wind and make the measurements that we needed.” Regarding the discovered field, Glyn Collinson, principal investigator of the mission, confessed that it was thought that “there must be some invisible force lurking there responsible for this outflow. But we’ve never been able to measure this before because we haven’t had the technology.”
The ambipolar field is a weak electric field that runs through the entire planet Earth and is as fundamental to its functioning as gravity and the magnetosphere. An invisible energy field that “lifts the skies up” by shaping the ionosphere. Its discovery raises many questions that can begin to be answered.
“Any planet with an atmosphere should have an ambipolar field,” Collinson said. “Now that we’ve finally measured it, we can begin learning how it’s shaped our planet as well as others over time.”
Why is it called ambipolar?
The field is so called because it works in both directions, with the ions pulling the electrons down as they sink under gravity, and at the same time, the electrons lifting the ions to greater heights as they try to escape into space. The ambipolar field lifts charged particles in our upper atmosphere to heights they would not otherwise reach, and so may have shaped the evolution of the planet in ways that are still unknown.