NASA Confirms Discovery of Earth's Third Energy Field, 'Polar Wind,' After 60-Year Search

• 12 Sep 2024

NASA Confirms Discovery of Earth's Third Energy Field, 'Polar Wind,' After 60-Year Search

 

NASA has recently confirmed the existence of Earth’s third energy field, known as the 'Polar Wind,' marking a significant milestone after a 60-year search.

 

Glyn Collinson, the principal investigator of the Endurance mission at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, highlighted the importance of this discovery in a recent video release. Collinson emphasized that this field is crucial for understanding Earth’s atmospheric dynamics. The Polar Wind, which has coexisted with the planet’s well-known gravitational and magnetic fields since the planet’s formation, is weak but plays a vital role by counteracting gravity and helping to elevate the atmosphere.

 

Scientists believe that the Polar Wind is key to explaining why Earth’s atmosphere rapidly evaporates near the poles. It may have significantly influenced the development of the uppermost layer of our atmosphere.

 

The quest for this field began in the 1960s when spacecraft observing the poles detected particles streaming from the atmosphere into space at supersonic speeds. Although it was known that sunlight could cause atmospheric particles to escape, the absence of heat in these particles suggested an unknown force was at work. At that time, the technology to detect such a distant energy field was not yet available.

 

The breakthrough came with observations from NASA’s suborbital rocket, which successfully measured the global electric field. The Endurance mission confirmed the presence of this ambipolar field. NASA’s findings indicated that this field drives atmospheric escape and influences the ionosphere—the upper layer of the atmosphere.

 

Collinson and his team have been working on developing the necessary sensors for the Endurance rocket mission since 2016. The mission launched on May 11, 2022, from Svalbard, Norway, the only location where measurements through the Polar Wind were feasible. Suzie Imber, a space physicist at the University of Leicester and co-author of the study, noted that Svalbard was uniquely positioned for this research.

 

The Endurance mission revealed that hydrogen ions, abundant in the Polar Wind, are expelled into space by an electric field 10.06 times stronger than gravity. This ambipolar field was found to increase the ionosphere’s density by 271%, maintaining its density at higher altitudes. Collinson described the field as a “conveyor belt” that lifts atmospheric particles into space.

 

This discovery opens new research avenues, particularly in understanding how similar energy fields might affect the atmospheres of other planets like Venus and Mars and how these processes may have influenced Earth's atmospheric evolution.