• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Even The Earth’s Magnetic Field Has Moon-Driven Tides

February 6, 2023 by Deborah Bloomfield

“There is a tide in the affairs of men,” Shakespeare had Brutus say. The Bard was speaking metaphorically, but it turns out there are far more real tides than he knew, with the latest being found in the cold plasma that surrounds the Earth in a giant donut shape above the atmosphere.

Shakespeare didn’t even know tides were caused by the Moon, let alone that the Earth’s crust and atmosphere both bulge slightly in time with the ocean. Nor was he aware that the Earth is surrounded by a region of disassociated protons and electrons, but perhaps he wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that it too has a tide.

Advertisement

This fact has been revealed in a new paper using forty years of data taken by satellites that can observe the plasmasphere’s boundary layer. However, it turns out the plasmasphere’s cycle is not the same as that observed for other parts of the Earth.

The plasmasphere is a region of magnetized plasma that follows geomagnetic field lines upwards from the ionosphere, from which the plasma rises during daylight, before collapsing back at night. 

The plasmasphere is known to bulge during daylight and shrink at night, but what this image doesn't capture is the Moon also shapes its height

The plasmasphere is known to bulge during daylight and shrink at night, but what this image doesn’t capture is the Moon also shapes its height. Image Credit: NASA

Although Dr Chao Xiao of Shandong University and co-authors found a clear pattern in the satellite data of the plasmasphere, they explain in their paper that “The signal possesses distinct diurnal (and monthly) periodicities, which are different from the semidiurnal (and semimonthly) variations dominant in the previously observed lunar tide effects in other regions.”

Using satellite measurements of the plasmapause – the plasmasphere’s outer boundary – from 1977 to 2015, the paper finds that the tides can be hard to detect during periods of high solar activity. However, when such interference is low, clear patterns could be observed based on the location and phase of the Moon. The high tide runs about six hours ahead of the Moon being overhead, in contrast to tides in liquids, solids, or gas.

Advertisement

The authors attribute these effects to disturbances in the Earth’s radial electric field, although they are not sure of the causal link. 

As the paper notes, the tides can be important for more than sailing. Leaving aside the question of whether we are finally ready to draw significant amounts of power from the oceans’ half-daily rise and fall, crustal tides can cause earthquakes and volcanic activity. 

“The ocean tide can influence the flow of heat from equatorial to polar regions,” the paper notes, and the intertidal zone may be the reason life made it out of the oceans at all.

“Atmospheric tides have a global impact on rainfall,” the paper adds, suggesting that maybe tides in plasma could matter too in some way we have yet to determine.

Advertisement

In addition to any Earthly consequences, plasmas are common in space, and the knowledge that astronomical bodies can induce tides in them could be useful for modeling their behaviors in many other circumstances.

The paper is published open access in Nature Physics. 

[H/T LiveScience]

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Social network Peanut expands to include more women with launch of Peanut Menopause
  2. Marketmind: Watch those spiralling gas prices
  3. Thai central bank chief warns economy remains fragile, exposed to shocks
  4. Be On The Cutting-Edge Of Tech With This Top-Rated Learning Bundle

Source Link: Even The Earth’s Magnetic Field Has Moon-Driven Tides

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • World’s Oldest Pots: 20,000-Year-Old Vessels May Have Been Used For Cooking Clams Or Brewing Beer
  • “The Body Is Slowly And Continuously Heated”: 14,000-Year-Old Smoked Mummies Are World’s Oldest
  • Pizza Slices, Polaroid Pictures, And Over 300 Hats: What’s Left Behind In Yellowstone’s Hydrothermal Areas?
  • The Mathematical Paradox That Lets You Create Something From Nothing
  • Ancient Asteroid Ripped Apart In Collision Had Flowing Water
  • Flying Foxes Include The World’s Biggest Bat And The Largest Mammal Capable Of True Flight
  • NASA Responds To Claims That Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS Is An Advanced Alien Spacecraft
  • Millions Of Tons Of Gold Are In Earth’s Oceans, Potentially Worth Over $2 Quadrillion
  • The Race Back To The Moon: US Vs China, Will What Happens Next Change The Future?
  • NOAA Issues G3 Geomagnetic Storm Warning As 500,000 Kilometer Hole Sends Solar Wind At Earth
  • Lasting 776 Days, This Is The Longest Case Of COVID-19 Ever Recorded
  • Living Cement: The Microbes In Your Walls Could Power The Future
  • What Can Your Earwax Reveal About Your Health?
  • Ever Seen A Giraffe Use An Inhaler? Now You Can, And It’s Incredibly Wholesome
  • Martian Mudstone Has Features That Might Be Biosignatures, New Brain Implant Can Decode Your Internal Monologue, And Much More This Week
  • Crocodiles Weren’t All Blood-Thirsty Killers, Some Evolved To Be Plant-Eating Vegetarians
  • Stratospheric Warming Event May Be Unfolding In The Southern Polar Vortex, Shaking Up Global Weather Systems
  • 15 Years Ago, Bees In Brooklyn Appeared Red After Snacking Where They Shouldn’t
  • Carnian Pluvial Event: It Rained For 2 Million Years — And It Changed Planet Earth Forever
  • There’s Volcanic Unrest At The Campi Flegrei Caldera – Here’s What We Know
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version