These variations led me think about the origin of the Earth's magnetic field. I am studying so much about galactic and extragalactic magnetic fields these days. May be it is good to start from the Earth!
Monday, August 2, 2010
Earth's Magnetic Fields
When a rock forms, its iron compounds (I think most of the rocks have small quantities of iron compounds) align with the Earth's magnetic field and become magnetized. Geologists can measure the age of the rock by different methods and they have collected data covering a period of at least five million years. Surprisingly it has been found that the magnetization directions of different rocks are not the same, indicating that during the last five million years the Earth's field direction has reversed several times.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
If anyone is interested in or have worked on magnetic fields, please let me know. We can share our ideas or study some papers/books together and discuss about them.
ReplyDelete