UPDATE: From Greg Laden's blog: The story was misreported.
Is the Earth's magnetic field caused affected by ocean currents, and not its massive molten core, as is generally thought? Gregory Ryskin, associate professor of chemical and biological engineering at Northwestern University in Illinois, thinks that the motion of salty seawater generates electromagnetic waves. His paper will be published by Britain’s Institute of Physics’s New Journal of Physics.
Earth’s magnetic field is vital for life, extending tens of thousands of miles into space and protecting the planet against radiation that would otherwise burn away the atmosphere and oceans.Oceans charge up new theory of magnetism (Via TDG)...
Existing theories explain Earth’s magnetism by suggesting that the centre of the planet comprises a white-hot solid iron ball about 1,500 miles in diameter, surrounded by an outer shell of liquid metal a further 1,400 miles thick.
RSS Feed
Well we could always try out magnets in space and see what they do there! Or on the moon, or on mars.
i'm a common man. but, isn't the magnetic field relatively even since we use compasses? and the motion of salt water in oceans strikes me as uneven. or maybe i know not a thing about oceans.
nope.
http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/06/new_theory_on_earths_magnetic.php
the headline is misleading. the article stipulates that *variations* in the earth's magnetic field may be due to these currents.
the earth's core still counts, but its total contribution is in question.
It must be the ocean currents, because everyone knows the earth is hollow.
That's where the unicorns live.
Anon @4 got there before I did.
Lot more core than there is sea.
Makes more sense than believing molten iron is magnetic.
If this was true, global warming would be an even bigger, more immediate problem.
All of you should read @4 first!
The headline is nonsense and makes the Gregory Ryskin looks crazy. The article is really about variations of the magnetic field.
πchan,
Your URL can go on your profile page, thanks.
Okay!
Dang!
When I first saw the story posted on Slashdot, I thought: "Hmm, wouldn't be more the other way around? As with swallows carrying coconuts, it's not a matter of how it's gripping the coconut, it's a matter of weight ratios!"
The hot, electrically conducting molten outer core (which is generating the magnetic field), at 30.8% of Earth's mass, can't be affected much by the 'Oceanic crust' (which includes the solid parts of the ocean) is only 0.099% of Earth's mass.. [That's a 311:1 weight ratio. Calculating for the ocean currents only, the ratio would probably be double that.]
http://www.solarviews.com/eng/earthint.htm
Noone with even a smattering of decent education in earth sciences could buy into a headline about the ocean causing the Earth's magnetism.
This is SO elementary - it falls into the *laughably* incorrect category - that this 'misunderstanding' is incredible. Note that the hypothetical ocean effect is a result of the existing field caused by the molten core.
Revolutions in science come from alternative theories - plate tectonics is only a few decades old - but blindly repeating bad reporting is not a virtue.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_Deep_Water
Hrmm...does this explain what's happened to the those poor people on "Lost"?
Climate Change and the Earth's Magnetic Poles,
A Possible Connection
Author: Kerton, Adrian K.
Source: Energy & Environment, Volume 20, Numbers 1-2, January 2009 , pp. 75-83(9)
download paper from my website
http://www.adriankweb.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/Climate_Change.htm