A new scientific study revealed that the region of magnetic anomalies in the South Atlantic, where the intensity of the magnetic field decreases due to mysterious reasons, has witnessed a remarkable expansion during the past years.
Scientists are seeking to solve the mystery of how this Western phenomenon forms and its possible effects on humans and life on Earth in the future.
more complicated
The Earth's magnetic field is essential to life on our planet. It plays the role of a powerful shield that protects living things from cosmic radiation and charged solar particles.
The magnetic field is often depicted as a bipolar magnet tilted about 11 degrees from the axis of rotation.
But the magnetic anomalies observed by scientists in a vast area between Africa and South America experiencing a decrease in magnetic density shows that the Earth's magnetic field is actually more complex than scientists previously thought.
So researchers from Britain's University of Leeds and the Danish Technical University participated in a new study published in "Nature Geoscience" in early May.
The study revealed that the region of magnetic anomalies in the South Atlantic Ocean continues to evolve and expand according to the data of the European Space Agency satellites.
Confused puzzle
Although scientists know that the Earth's magnetic field is created by the movement of molten iron that circulates in the outer nucleus such as the dynamo of a bicycle, generating electrical currents that in turn create the magnetic field, the magnetic depressions and how they occur represent a puzzle for them, as it is not possible to predict the time or place of their occurrence.
But some scientists associate the regions with magnetic anomalies and another phenomenon is the inversion of the Earth's magnetic field when the north magnetic pole of the earth becomes in its south and the south pole in its north.
Unlike the geographic North Pole located in a fixed location, scientists have observed since 1831 that the magnetic north location is changing with time, and that it is moving slowly from the Canadian Arctic regions towards Siberia.
Quick change
This displacement has gained since the nineties of the last century, a speed of between 50 and 60 km per year, compared to less than 15 km in the past, which means the need to update the global magnetic model repeatedly, which is vital for navigation on smart phones for example.
Research has shown that the reflection of the Earth's magnetic field occurs every few hundreds of thousands of years, but it is not entirely clear how these reflections can be linked to what is currently happening with the anomalies in the South Atlantic Ocean, scientists say.
Some scientists have assumed that this could be the result of a huge reservoir of dense rocks beneath Africa called the Great African Low Speed Zone.
But what is certain is that the abnormality of the South Atlantic does not seem static, as it has grown in size since 1970, while it is moving westward at a rate of about 20 km annually.
The new data presented by the European Space Agency's "Swarm" satellites also showed the emergence of a second center of magnetic dip decrease during the past five years within this anomaly off the coast of southwest Africa in a similar division.
Is there anything to worry about?
At the moment, there is no cause for concern, the researchers say, as the European Space Agency indicates that the most important impacts today are largely limited to technical faults that can occur to satellites and spacecraft.
This is caused by exposure to a greater than normal amount of charged particles in low Earth orbit as it crosses the low magnetic South Atlantic Ocean.
But that does not mean that the importance of this magnetic anomaly should be underestimated. In the past two centuries, the Earth's magnetic field has lost about 9% of its strength on average.
"The challenge now is to understand the processes at the core of the Earth that drive these changes," says geophysicist Jurgen Matska of the German Research Center for Earth Sciences for the ScienceAlert website.