NASA has stated that the recently discovered field is important for understanding the way Earth works.
Almost sixty years after it was first hypothesised, a long-sought invisible force around the Earth has been detected, and it is as important as gravity and magnetic fields to Earth. The newly discovered energy field, which is Earth’s third energy field, is called ‘Polar Wind’, and it only existed in theory. It has finally been discovered by NASA after a long-sought search that has lasted 60 years.
The field offers an explanation on how Earth's atmosphere escapes above the north and south poles, so easily and quickly. It can also help in determining Earth’s thin upper atmosphere.
Glyn Collinson, the principal investigator of Endurance at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, talked about the discovery and said, "This field is so fundamental to understanding the way our planet works — it's been here since the beginning alongside gravity and magnetism," adding, "Despite being weak, it's incredibly important — it counters gravity and it basically lifts the skies up."
Meanwhile, according to the team of scientists at NASA, the newly found ‘Polar Wind’ also plays a key role in our atmosphere’s upper-most layer. It cannot be missed that in the 1960s when several spacecraft flew over the Earth’s poles, they saw a stream of particles from the atmosphere flowing into space, and it was taking place at supersonic speeds. At that time, scientists noted that sunlight caused particles to leak into space. However, the detected particles did not show any signs of being heated.
Hence, Collinson remained of the opinion that something certainly was attracting these particles out of the atmosphere. However, during that time, the technology to detect an energy field, which could be sensed over hundreds of miles, was not ready.
The team of scientists at NASA finally have managed to make the discovery using observation from a NASA suborbital rocket. Since it was able to measure the planet-wide electric field and gave the measurements to NASA’s Endurance Mission, the team confirmed this ambipolar field. According to NASA, the observations meant that this energy field remained the driving atmospheric force that shapes the ionosphere – a layer of the upper atmosphere.
The Endurance mission found out that the hydrogen ions, which are present in huge quantities in the polar wind, were sent into space by an electric field, almost 10 times stronger than gravity. This ambipolar field only increases the ionosphere’s density, and acts as a path that pulls the atmospheric particles into space.
