A NASA rocket has confirmed the existence of Earth’s hidden electric field

The American space agency NASA claims to have confirmed the long-suspected existence of an electric field that surrounds the Earth.

The rocket, named Endurance, collected the information that led to the confirmation. Endurance launched from Norway on May 11, 2022. The launch site was as close as possible to the North Pole.

Endurance reached a peak height of 768 kilometers. The rocket captured electric field data during its 19-minute flight before splashing into the sea off the coast of Greenland.

NASA says spacecraft have been flying over Earth since the 1960s sticks they recorded collections of particles streaming from the planet’s atmosphere into space. But the cause of these ebbs remained a mystery for a long time. Scientists lacked the technology and tools to confirm the electric field and investigate it further.

But the development of new observational methods and instruments in recent years has led NASA to plan the Endurance mission. So the agency built a rocket and a new data tool and planned a launch.

NASA scientist Glyn Collinson, an expert in space instrument design, led the Endurance mission.

Collinson explains in the video that scientists believe the electric field they were looking for was one of three energy fields affecting Earth. The others are gravitational and magnetic. Scientists call the third energy field the “ambipolar electric field.”

A NASA statement said scientists believe the ambipolar field is an influential driving force behind the “polar wind.” They described the wind as “a steady stream of charged particles into space that occurs over the Earth’s poles.” Scientists believe that the ambipolar electric field works against some effects of gravity.

This electric field lifts charged particles in Earth’s upper atmosphere “to greater heights than they would otherwise reach,” NASA said. Scientists assumed that this electric field starts at an altitude of about 250 kilometers. This is where the atoms in our atmosphere break up into negatively charged electrons and positively charged ions. This activity helps create a part of Earth’s atmosphere known as the ionosphere.

NASA noted that the Endurance mission allowed researchers to successfully identify and measure “the planet-wide electric field, which is believed to be essential to the Earth as its gravitational and magnetic fields. A study describing the team’s results recently appeared in the publication Nature.

NASA said the study of the ambipolar electric field is important because it “may have shaped our planet evolution in ways that have yet to be explored.” In addition, the agency said further study of the area may help scientists better understand other planets and perhaps find those with conditions that can support life.

Chief Collinson said that during the mission, the instrument on the rocket was able to measure an electrical voltage of 0.55 volts. He said this level was very low, about the same voltage used to power the watch batteries. But he noted that 0.55 volts is “just the right amount” to explain the outflows of particles driving the polar wind.

Collinson said he considers the results “incredibly important” because the newly confirmed electric field can counteract the effects of gravity and “basically lift the sky.” He described the field as a kind of “conveyor belt it lifts this atmosphere into space.”

Alex Glocer is a project scientist for the Endurance mission and co-authored the study. He said he agreed with those findings. “That’s more than enough to defy gravity — enough, in fact, to shoot them up into space at supersonic speeds,” Glocer said. Supersonic describes speeds that are greater than the speed of sound.

The team said the results of the study suggest that the ambipolar electric field also significantly increases the density of the ionosphere at higher atmospheric locations.

Collinson said: “Any planet with an atmosphere should have an ambipolar field. Now that we’ve finally measured it, we can begin to figure out how it has shaped our planet and others over time.”

I’m Bryan Lynn.

Bryan Lynn wrote this story for VOA Learning English based on reports from NASA.

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The words in this story

pole – n. be part of the axis of the sphere and especially the axis of the earth

act against – v. reduce the bad influence of something else

essential – adj. relating to the most important or main part of something

evolution – n. a gradual process of change and development

batteries – n. an object that supplies electricity to things like radios, toys, cars, etc.

conveyor belt – n. a continuous movable piece of rubber or metal used to transport objects from one place to another