Featured Image Credit: Elen11 / MARK GARLICK/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY / Getty
Recent discoveries have left NASA on alert as it's understood that the Earth's magnetic field has a huge 'dent' that could prove incredibly dangerous to biological and mechanical production.
Space is strange, and something as 'simple' and seemingly inconsequential as a minor tilt in the rotation of Earth can have major long-term consequences.
Unfortunately, NASA have discovered that there's now a weak point or 'dent' in the Earth's magnetic field, which would allow potentially dangerous radiation from the Sun to penetrate the surface of our planet.
This area in particular has been called the South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA), and stretches around 4,300,000 square miles across an area that encompasses South America and Africa.
Advert
Initially discovered in 2020, it's understood that this SAA has expanded by around 7%, and has shifted from a single zone into two separate 'blobs' that compromise Earth due to limited magnetic strength.
What makes this compromise of the Earth's magnetic field so dangerous is that, when in tact, it prevents dangerous radiation from the Sun that would prove harmful to biological life on the surface. It also has major potential impacts for technology - specially that of satellites in orbit right now - as it could disable computer signals and compromise satellite data collection.
This could prove challenging for not only the satellites currently orbiting Earth but also future missions and data collection efforts, which would obviously have major impacts on Earth. Elon Musk's Starlink, for example, relies entirely on satellites for its connection, and they would be at risk if these trends continue.
Essential technology such as GPS also relies on satellites, so the SAA could prove to be incredibly disruptive for general daily life and even aspects such as self-driving cars if satellites were affected.
This could also prove to be a major roadblock when it comes to further space exploration, including any plans for expeditions to Mars from agencies like SpaceX.
Speculation surrounding the SAA indicates that there's a risk of malfunction for spacecrafts when encountering the SAA, which would be incredibly dangerous for any expeditions and would result in potentially irreparable damage.
It's understandable then that NASA are keeping a close eye on the SAA and ensuring that we understand as much as possible about it's formation and relationship with Earth.
Terry Sabaka, a geophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, explains that: "Even though the SAA is slow-moving, it is going through some change in morphology, so it's also important that we keep observing it by having continued missions, because that's what helps us make models and predictions."
Hopefully this indicates that we'll have a better understanding of how to deal with the SAA in the future, but as with all things in space, there's only so much that you can do before things become out of your control.
