NASA Rocket Confirms Existence of Earth’s Hidden Electric Field

2024 · VOA Learning English

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1. The American space agency NASA says it has confirmed the long-suspected existence of an electric field that surrounds Earth.

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2. A rocket named Endurance gathered the information that led to the confirmation. Endurance launched from Norway on May 11, 2022.

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3. The launch site was the closest possible to the North Pole. Endurance reached a top altitude of 768 kilometers.

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4. The rocket captured data on the electric field during its 19-minute flight before splashing down in the sea, off the coast of Greenland.

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5. NASA says that since the 1960s, spacecraft flying over Earth’s poles have recorded collections of particles flowing from the planet’s

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6. atmosphere into space. But the cause of these outflows long remained a mystery.

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7. Scientists lacked the technology and tools to confirm an electric field and further explore it.

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8. But the development in recent years of new observation methods and instruments led NASA to plan the Endurance mission.

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9. So the agency built the rocket and a new data instrument and planned the launch.

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10. Collinson explains in a video that scientists believe the electric field they searched for was one of three energy fields affecting Earth.

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11. The others are gravitational and magnetic. Scientists are calling the third energy field the “ambipolar electric field.”

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12. A NASA statement says scientists believe the ambipolar field is an influential driver of the “polar wind.”

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13. They described the wind as “a steady outflow of charged particles into space that occurs above Earth’s poles.”

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14. Scientists believe the ambipolar electric field counteracts some of the effects of gravity.

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15. This electric field lifts the charged particles in Earth’s upper atmosphere “to greater heights than they would otherwise reach,” NASA said.

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16. Scientists had theorized this electric field began at around 250 kilometers high.

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17. This is where atoms in our atmosphere break apart into negatively charged electrons and positively charged ions.

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18. This activity helps form a part of Earth’s atmosphere known as the ionosphere.

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19. NASA noted the Endurance mission permitted researchers to successfully identify and measure “a planet-wide electric field thought to be as fundamental to Earth as its

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20. gravity and magnetic fields.” A study describing the team’s results recently appeared in the publication Nature

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21. NASA said studying the ambipolar electric field is important because it “may have shaped our planet’s evolution in ways yet to be explored.”

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22. In addition, the agency said further study of this field can help scientists better understand other planets and possibly find ones with conditions that may support

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23. life. Leader Collinson said that, during the mission, the instrument on the rocket was able to measure an electrical voltage of 0.55 volts.

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24. He said this level is very low, about the same voltage used to power a watch battery

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25. But, he noted that 0.55 volts was “just the right amount” to explain the outflows of particles driving the polar wind.

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26. Collinson said he finds the results “incredibly important” because the newly confirmed electric field can counter the effects of gravity and “basically lifts the skies up.”

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27. He described the field as a kind of conveyor belt that’s lifting this atmosphere up into space.”

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28. Alex Glocer is a project scientist for the Endurance mission and was a co-writer of the study. He said he agrees with those findings.

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29. “That’s more than enough to counter gravity in fact, it’s enough to launch them upwards into space at supersonic speeds,” Glocer said.

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30. Supersonic describes speeds that are greater than the speed of sound.

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31. The team said the study results suggest the ambipolar electric field also greatly increases the density of the ionosphere at higher atmospheric

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32. positions. Collinson said, “Any planet with an atmosphere should have an ambipolar field.

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33. Now that we’ve finally measured it, we can begin learning how it’s shaped our planet as well as others over time.” I’m Bryan Lynn.

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