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NASA Discovers a Long-Sought Global Electric Field on Earth
An international team of scientists has successfully measured a planet-wide electric field thought to be as fundamental to Earth as its gravity and magnetic fields. Known as the ambipolar electric field, scientists first hypothesized over 60 years ago that it drove atmospheric escape above Earth’s North and South Poles. Measurements from a suborbital rocket have confirmed the existence of the ambipolar field and quantified its strength, revealing its role in driving atmospheric escape and shaping our ionosphere — a layer of the upper atmosphere — more broadly. The paper was published today in the journal Nature.
First hypothesized more than 60 years ago, the ambipolar electric field is a key driver of the “polar wind,” a steady outflow of charged particles into space that occurs above Earth’s poles. “Svalbard is the only rocket range in the world where you can fly through the polar wind and make the measurements we needed,” said Suzie Imber, a space physicist at the University of Leicester, UK, and co-author of the paper. The European Incoherent Scatter Scientific Association (EISCAT) Svalbard radar, located in Longyearbyen, made ground-based measurements of the ionosphere critical to interpreting the rocket data.
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