Skywatch near the North Pole is the best place to see the northern lights. When the Earth's magnetic field was disrupted 41,000 years ago, the Auroras were not present.
The planet's magnetic north and south weakened and the magnetic field tilted on its axis during the Laschamp event.
The magnetic pull that normally directs the flow of high-energy solar particles toward the north and south poles was lessened.
It took 1,300 years for the magnetic field to return to its original strength and tilt, and during that time the Auroras were seen at near-equatorial latitudes.
At the AGU conference, a graduate student from the University of Michigan said that the period of intense geomagnetic change may have shaped the atmosphere on the planet.
There are 8 dazzling facts about the Northern lights.
Our planet's molten core creates the Earth's magnetic field. Magnetic poles at the surface in the north and south are connected by magnetic field lines.
The magnetosphere protects the planet from radioactive particles from space. Earth's atmosphere is protected from being worn away by solar wind or streaming particles by the magnetosphere.
On the side of Earth that faces the sun, the magnetosphere is compressed to 10 times Earth's radius. NASA says the magnetosphere can extend for hundreds of Earth-lengths on the nighttime side.
The magnetosphere's strength plummeted to nearly 4% of modern values about 41,000 years ago. The magnetosphere disappeared completely on the day side according to investigations in the past.
A daisy chain of different models was used to discover the result. They fed the data from the rock and volcanic samples into a simulation of the magnetic field.
They combined this data with simulations of the magnetosphere's interactions with the solar wind, then fed those results into a model that calculated the location, shape, and strength of the Aurora.
This is the first time that scientists have used this technique to predict the location of the Aurora.
The team found that even though the magnetosphere shrunk to 3.8 times Earth's radius, it never disappeared completely. The poles that were formerly positioned north and south moved towards the equator during this time.
The tilt of the earth's magnetic field was skewed from the geographic poles. The precipitation followed the magnetic poles and moved from the geographic polar regions of Earth to the equator-ward latitudes.
New models suggest that the Laschamps event could have affected habitability on prehistoric Earth by plunging the planet into an environmental crisis.
According to Live Science, other researchers found that a weakened magnetosphere would have been easily penetrated by solar winds, leading to a damaged ozone layer, climate upheaval, and extinctions.
The models offered insights for future research that could establish a link between Laschamp's magnetic field changes and serious ecological repercussions on Earth.
There are related content.
The sky is lit up by rising 'phoenix' Aurora and starburst galaxies.
Northern lights dazzle in night-sky images.
The internet apocalypse could happen with the next solar storm.
The article was published by Live Science. The original article can be found here.
