Reuters’ web site, on the 16th of December 2008, has an article about new findings that show that the Earth has holes in its magnetic field.
The Earth's protective magnetosphere has two large holes that are letting in disruptive solar winds, scientists said on Tuesday.
Understanding how these holes form will help them better predict the electrical storms that cause power grid blackouts and the aurora, activity that will peak in 2012 as sunspots hit their maximum level.
Scientists at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco said they had been entirely wrong about how solar particles that cause the storms were entering the Earth's magnetosphere.
The magnetosphere is a bubble of magnetism that surrounds Earth and protects us from solar wind.
"What we observed was the breach in the levee," said Jimmy Raeder, a physicist at the University of New Hampshire. "This has taken us completely by surprise."
"The opening was huge -- four times wider than Earth itself," said Raeder. "This kind of influx is an order of magnitude greater than what we thought was possible."
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