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How Earth produces its own Magnetic Field?

 


   Our Earth is a beautiful home for all living beings. It gives us shelter and even protects us from various cosmic activities. One of the best protections that our earth provides us is protecting us from the harmful solar wind by using its strong magnetic field. This means the earth itself acts like a giant bar magnet thereby producing and stretching its magnetic field outer into space. The magnetic field present in outer space is called the magnetosphere. The magnetic field extends up to tens of thousands of kilometers into space. For example, the magnetic field of Jupiter extends up to the orbit of Saturn.

     First of all, let’s see the orientation of the magnetic field over the Earth. The top portion of the earth is always called as the Geographic North Pole and the down portion of the earth is called as the Geographic South Pole. But the imaginary magnet present inside the earth always faces its north magnetic pole in the geographic south pole (facing downwards) and faces its south magnetic pole towards the geographic north pole (facing upwards). So the magnetic field lines will always flow from the geographic South Pole to the geographic North Pole. Now let’s see how the magnetic field is produced.


Orientation of Earth's Magnetic Field

      The origin of the magnetic field is deep inside the earth. The Earth consists of a crust, mantle, outer core, and inner core. The inner and outer core is primarily made of iron. The inner core is very hot and solid due to the immense pressure and gravity. The outer core is a liquid metal due to lower pressure. The heat from the inner core heats the lower part of the outer core (lower mantle), thereby moving the liquid to the upper part of the outer core (upper mantle). As the liquid moves up, it cools and solidifies, and again falls back down thereby getting heated again by the heat of the inner core. This process is called convection.


Credit (Convection currents in Earth's mantle): By Bkilli1 - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28936051


     As the liquid is primarily of iron, it has more free electrons in it. So, due to the convection process, the flow of electrons creates a current called convection current. Such current produces tiny magnetic fields. When a charged particle passes again through these tiny magnetic fields it creates a secondary magnetic field. Thus spinning of the Earth (Coriolis Effect), converts these magnetic fields into tiny whirlpools. These several tiny pools form a giant magnetic field by the rotation of the Earth (Coriolis force), resulting in the formation of Earth's magnetosphere.



Tiny Magnetic fields due to convection currents.



Credit (Converged Magnetic Field): By Andrew Z. Colvin - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=98901558


     

   

 


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