the-future-now: The moon may have spent 2 billion years creating a giant magnetic field Earth has a
the-future-now:The moon may have spent 2 billion years creating a giant magnetic fieldEarth has a superpower you might not be aware of: Thanks to the swirling melted metal in Earth’s outer core, the planet maintains a magnetic field that protects us from the worst of the sun’s radiation.The process is called a dynamo, and runs on the same principle as a bicycle light. In a bicycle light, pedaling moves magnets around a wire, which creates a current in the wire. In Earth, the process is reversed: Electrical currents in the molten metal creates magnetic field.The moon used to have this superpower too, long ago when its insides were also molten — between 4.5 and 3.56 billion years ago. But a new paper published in Science Advances argues the moon was able to create a magnetic field for another billion years or so, just a much weaker one. Read more (8/9/17)follow @the-future-now -- source link