Latest Geomagnetism Stories

Did you know a solar flare can make your toilet stop working?That's the surprising conclusion of a NASA-funded study by the National Academy of Sciences entitled Severe Space Weather Events"”Understanding Societal and Economic Impacts. In the 132-page report, experts detailed what might happen to our modern, high-tech society in the event of a "super solar flare" followed by an extreme geomagnetic storm. They found that almost nothing is immune from space weather"”not even the...

Every so often, Earth's magnetic field flips on its head, turning the magnetic North Pole into the South Pole and vice versa. It last happened 780,000 years ago, and is predicted to occur again in about 1,500 years ... maybe. The overall frequency is hard to predict - there was one period in Earth's history when the field didn't reverse for 30 million years. Why these flip-flops happen at all is a great riddle, but a new hypothesis on the origins of the...

VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwire - Sept. 23, 2008) - Christopher James Gold Corp. (TSX VENTURE:CJG) ("the Company"), together with its wholly-owned subsidiary, DeepRock Geothermal Inc., is pleased to report the completion of a preliminary geophysical survey at the Canoe Reach geothermal project in British Columbia. The Canoe Reach Geothermal Project is located approximately 32 km southeast of the Town of Valemount, B.C., along the banks of the Canoe River (between the...

At 11:18 AM on the cloudless morning of Thursday, September 1, 1859, 33-year-old Richard Carrington"”widely acknowledged to be one of England's foremost solar astronomers"”was in his well-appointed private observatory. Just as usual on every sunny day, his telescope was projecting an 11-inch-wide image of the sun on a screen, and Carrington skillfully drew the sunspots he saw.On that morning, he was capturing the likeness of an enormous group of sunspots. Suddenly, before his eyes, two...

A Russian scientist has looked in to a possible link between geomagnetism and human health, suggesting their may be a relation to the number of suicides during certain seasonal peaks in the Earth's geomagnetic field. Oleg Shumilov of the Institute of North Industrial Ecology Problems in Russia believes human beings may be able to sense the Earth's magnetic field just as many animals do.Light levels in northern countries are known to influence depression, but Shumilov thinks geomagnetism may...

Behold the full Moon. Ancient craters and frozen lava seas lie motionless under an airless sky of profound quiet. It's a slow-motion world where even a human footprint may last millions of years. Nothing ever seems to happen there.Right?Wrong. NASA-supported scientists have realized that something does happen every month when the Moon gets a lashing from Earth's magnetic tail."Earth's magnetotail extends well beyond the orbit of the Moon and, once a month, the Moon orbits through...

What are the signs of spring? They are as familiar as a blooming daffodil, a songbird at dawn, a surprising shaft of warmth from the afternoon sun. And, oh yes, don't forget the aurora borealis. Spring is aurora season. For reasons not fully understood by scientists, the weeks around the vernal equinox are prone to Northern Lights. Canadians walking their dogs after dinner, Scandinavians popping out to the sauna, Alaskan Huskies on the Iditarod trail -- all they have to do is look up and...

Something strange is happening in the atmosphere above Africa and researchers have converged on Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to discuss the phenomenon. The Africa Space Weather Workshop kicked off Nov. 12th with nearly 100 scientists and students in attendance.The strange phenomenon that brings all these people together is the ion plume"”"a newly discovered form of space weather," says University of Colorado atmospheric scientist and Workshop co-organizer Tim Fuller-Rowell. Researchers...

Imagine hiking across Antarctica, through ice, cold and bitter wind, enduring months of hardship, and finally arriving at the doorstep of the South Pole itself. At that moment you get hit by a Sahara sandstorm.That's the analogy scientists are using to describe what happened to the ESA-NASA Ulysses spacecraft last December. "Ulysses was approaching the South Pole of the sun when it was 'sandblasted' by a cloud of high-energy particles"”protons, electrons and heavy ions," says Arik...

SAN FRANCISCO -- Earth's north magnetic pole is drifting away from North America and toward Siberia at such a clip that Alaska might lose its spectacular Northern Lights in the next 50 years, scientists said Thursday. Despite accelerated movement over the past century, the possibility that Earth's modestly fading magnetic field will collapse is remote. But the shift could mean Alaska may no longer see the sky lights known as auroras, which might then be more visible in more southerly areas of...