Earth’s third energy field known as ‘Polar Wind’, which only existed in theory so far, has now been discovered by Nasa after a search that has lasted 60 years.
Glyn Collinson, principal investigator of Endurance at Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Centre in Maryland, in a video released by Nasa, said that this field is fundamental to understanding the way our planet works. According to Collinson, the field has been there since the beginning alongside the other two energy fields – gravity and magnetic. The scientists said that although the field is weak, it is significant to Earth as it counters gravity and lifts the skies up.
According to the team of scientists, Polar winds have crucial answers about how Earth’s atmosphere evaporates rapidly above the north and south poles. They feel that this field of energy may have played a critical role in the evolution of our atmosphere’s upper-most layer.
In the 1960s, several spacecrafts that flew over the Earth’s poles had witnessed a stream of particles from the atmosphere flowing into space at supersonic speeds. Scientists were aware that sunlight caused particles to leak into space. Regardless, the detected particles did not show any signs that they were heated. Collinson said that there had to be something that was drawing these particles out of the atmosphere. However, back then, the technology that was needed to detect an energy field, which can only be sensed over hundreds of miles, was not available.
How did the scientists discover the field?
The team of scientists made the discovery based on the observation from a Nasa suborbital rocket which was able to measure this planet-wide electric field. The measurements given by Nasa’s Endurance Mission confirmed the existence of this ambipolar field. According to Nasa, the observations revealed that this energy field has been driving atmospheric escape and shaping the ionosphere – a layer of the upper atmosphere.