Astrum Space - This Secret Force Field Is the Reason We’re Alive

Episode Date: September 21, 2026

This compilation explores the mysterious force fields that surround our planet, protecting Earth from the deadly dangers of the cosmos.▀▀▀▀▀▀A huge thanks to our Patreons who help make these videos possible. Sign-up here: ⁠https://bit.ly/4aiJZNF

Winter is coming, said Edd Stark. When he uttered his famous words in the TV series of Game of Thrones, it was more than just a pronouncement of the normal passing of the seasons. Rather than lasting a mere four months, winter in the fantasy realm of Westeros could be a big problem. It could potentially last for years, even up to a decade. Crops would be harder to grow, the weather would be colder. The arrival of winter was the harbinger of an era of hardship.

Of course, while Westeros is pure fantasy, seasons that last for years on end are not limited to fictional stories. We experience them on Earth. Various cycles are playing out on our planet, and when they are in conflict, we experience a period of stability. It's worth noting, though, that they will not be in conflict forever. In our future, winter is coming too. But what are these cycles? How can better understanding them help? us prepare for our future. I'm Alex McColgan and you're watching Astrum. Join me today in exploring the different cycles that affect our planet's weather and warmth.

To begin, we should probably ask a simple question. What causes the seasons that we are familiar with? You may well already know the answer to this question, but as it will provide the starting point for what comes later, it's worth reviewing. Besides, this question is not entirely. entirely straightforward, depending on where you are on the planet, you may not actually get any seasons. Generally speaking, seasons we know of are caused as a result of our planet's tilt. Because our planet rotates at a tilted angle as it orbits the sun, one hemisphere

will point towards the sun during part of the year, while the other will point away. Naturally, hemispheres that are pointed towards the sun become much warmer, while pointing away from the sun makes them colder, creating the regular sea. seasons, summer and winter. This effect becomes stronger the higher up or lower down the planet you go. Consider the small Norwegian town of Tromser. Because of its higher altitude, Tromser isn't just pointed more towards the sun. The tilt of the Earth is such that, from its perspective, the sun never sets for months

in summer and never rises for a few months in winter. Naturally, this produces quite the seasonal variance. this effect lessens the closer to the equator you get. There, the tilt of the Earth doesn't really change how close or far away from the sun the area is, and as such, the Earth doesn't notice much temperature variation. It's all just a question of how close you are to the Sun. However, did you know that the tilt of the Earth isn't static? Nor is it the only thing about the planet's orbit that influences how warm or cold we are. Imagine for a second the model you are familiar with, of the Earth orbiting the Sun in a nice circle, flat to the plane of the solar system.

In this model, we circle the Sun because of the Sun's gravity. This model is too basic. In reality, the Sun is not the only source of gravity pulling at us, although it is the biggest. Many of the planets pull and tug at us, particularly large ones like Jupiter, which has a mass 318 times the size of our own planet, or Saturn, which is 95 times, and we in turn pull on them. As planets all rotate at different speeds around the Sun, this constant pulling and releasing creates a delicate dance, far more complicated than a simple circle. This interplay of increasing and lessening gravity has many different effects on our angle of tilt, our orbit, and even the plane

in which they occur. Broadly speaking, these variables have stabilized into cycles. These cycles were first described effectively by Serbian geophysicist and astronomer Milutin Milankovic in 1920, and thus were called Melankovic cycles. The first such cycle I want to look at is the changing shape of our orbit. Over the course of a 100,000-year period, the Earth's orbit around the sun becomes more and then less elliptical. Naturally, if our orbit is closer to that of a circle, our distance from the sun remains relatively consistent, and we get about the same amount of sunlight all year round.

However, once our orbit becomes elliptical, there are parts of the year where we are further from the sun and thus colder, and parts where we're closer and warmer. As it happens, the perihelion of the Earth's orbit, or the bit where we're closest to the sun, happens roughly on January 3rd, while the Apheelian, or the bit where we're furthest away, happens on roughly July 4th. I'm recording this in the UK, which means for my hemisphere, January is winter.

So for me, this is quite nice. Although we are in a phase right now where this cycle of the Earth's orbit is more circular than it is elliptical, we still experience a 7% difference in the amount of sunlight we receive in January compared to July. The sunlight difference means that my northern hemisphere's winters are warmer, while our summers are milder. In the southern hemisphere, the reverse is true. Because they're experiencing summer during this warmer phase, their summers become even warmer,

winters become colder. And that's just at this stage of the 100,000-year Milankovic cycle. As the Earth's orbit becomes more elliptical, that 7% sunlight difference turns in into a 23% difference, quite significant. You might think this seems overall a little unfair on the Southern Hemisphere. The Northern Hemisphere benefits from this cycle stabilizing its seasons, while this cycle makes the Southern Hemisphere seasons more extreme. Don't worry, though, as another cycle is at play to bring things false circle.

This current seasonal rotation happens because the Earth's tilt is consistent as it orbits, except it isn't consistent. Little by little, the angle the Earth's axis is rotating along is changing too. It moves as if it were drawing a circle on the sky above it, in a cycle that lasts 26,000 years. One upshot of this is that while our axis is currently pointing at the North Star, or Polaris, this will eventually no longer be the case. Over time, it will point at different stars,

before eventually circling back to point at Polaris again. The other upshot of this is that in 13,000 years, the Northern Hemisphere will be having its summer in January, while the Southern Hemisphere will be the one with a white Christmas. So, then it will be us experiencing a more profound seasonal variation. While harsher winters are unpleasant, they're not what I promised. I started this video by describing seasons that lasted years. These exist too.

There are Milankovic cycles that create winters that last for thousands of years. Or, to speak more accurately, there are Melanchovich cycles that help cause ice ages. We don't fully understand how ice ages come and go. There are numerous theories. However, it must be noted that some of the 100,000-year spans of ice ages line up extremely well with the 100,000-year Melankovych cycles. For instance, there is a cycle whereby the plane on which the Earth rotates around the sun rises and falls over the course of 100,000 years.

This change in its orbital inclination does not obviously explain why it is that the Earth would be getting colder or warmer. After all, the Earth is still the same distance from the Sun. However, it lines up so perfectly with the time periods ice ages were occurring at over the last 800,000 years that scientists conclude, that there must be a connection. Perhaps cosmic dust lying in the plane of Earth's orbit blocks out some sunlight when we are at one inclination

but is not in the way when we are at another. This could go some way toward explaining the occurrence of ice ages during these time periods. Whatever the case, there is at least one other cycle that influences the arrival of ice ages on Earth, and this might perhaps be the most important for us today. It is the tilt of Earth's rotation. I already mentioned that this axis of tilt rotates around the planet,

but it also changes the angle at which it does this. Over the course of 41,000 years, it alternates between 21.1 degrees and 24.5 degrees. At the moment, it is 23.4 degrees and is declining. You might think that this is a good thing. The smaller the angle of tilt, the less extreme our seasonal temperature variations might be, and the warmer our winters will become. Surely that is a good thing for avoiding ice ages.

Surprisingly, it is quite the opposite. Left to its own devices, this lessening tilt would lead us into another spreading of the ice sheets and cooling of the planet that would hit its peak in 9,800 years. It is not the harshness of the winter that causes this spread, but strangely enough, it is the mildness of the summers. You see, when winters occur, snow builds up at the top of mountains and in cold polar regions. In warm summers, this snow tends to melt away. However, if the summer is mild enough, the snow sticks around, becoming a more permanent feature of the landscape. Icey snow is white in colour and reflective, which means that light has a tendency to bounce off it rather than be absorbed by it. This means that if the earth is covered

with ice, it reflects sunlight back into space and actively becomes even colder. thus creating conditions for even more ice. In more than one sense of the word, this is a snowball effect. We are right now in an interglacial period. This is a brief moment of warmth that lasts a few tens of thousands of years or so in dispersing a deeper, more general cold trend. If it wasn't for this warmer uptick, we would actually be in an ice age right now, and from a technical perspective, actually are in an ice age,

just while we're not fully noticing. If it wasn't for this briefly warm interglacial period, mankind would have experienced ice across the history of its entire existence. Thanks to the Melankovic cycles, that brief period of warmth will someday end, then winter will truly come. Of course, this is under the assumption that Melanchovic cycles are the only factors

that influence global temperatures. And while broad trends lasting 100,000 years, and interspersing uptics every 41,000 years are indeed demonstrable and consistent in parts of fossil record, the location and orientation of our planet are not the only thing that matters. CO2 and methane levels in the atmosphere are also driving forces behind global temperature fluctuations. And if we're not careful, just as an ice age can build up with a snowball effect, stripping away of ice can happen in the same way, but in reverse. Less ice means less reflection of sunlight, making things overall warmer, which leads to less ice.

Still, if Milankovic cycles are the only factor in action, we are in for a cold future. The Milankovic cycles affecting the planet currently are mostly working to stabilize the system, leaving us in a temperate, relatively even temperature zone. However, there will come a time when they will make temperatures hot and cold more extreme. We would do well to keep these cycles in mind. Milankovych cycles are in it for the long haul. Winter might not be coming for a long time, but one day, our planet will face winter again. When you think about the North Pole, you don't expect it to go anywhere.

And you certainly don't expect it to change places with the South Pole. That would just be wrong. Our magnetic compasses would all point the wrong way. We'd need to update our maps. Birds would probably be horribly confused. And yet, although they sound like something out of science fiction, geomagnetic reversals like this are real. They've happened before, and the process behind it might be a lot more dangerous than you'd

think. To be clear, it's not the reversals themselves that are potentially dangerous. It's the buildup. During those times, the Earth's magnetic field, the shield around our planet that keeps safe from deadly solar radiation, will drop to as low as 10% of its current strength, leading one group of scientists in 2021 to predict climate shifts and mass extinctions, and others to describe satellites being destroyed, electrical grids going offline, and deadly radiation raining down on us for hundreds or even thousands of years.

This is troubling when you consider that we are a couple of hundred thousand years overdue for our next geomagnetic reversal, and based on fluctuations in the Earth's magnetic field that scientists are detecting right now, the build-up to a geomagnetic reversal may even have begun already. Which begs the question, should we be worried? I'm Alex McCauldgen and you're watching Astrum. Join with me today as we explore the science behind geomagnetic reversals and find out whether the next one will be an apocalyptic scenario, or whether it'll lead to nothing more than

a few lost birds. What truly happens when things go south? Let's start by trying to understand where the Earth's magnetic field comes from in the first place. It's not a given that our planet would have a magnetic field. The two planets, flanking us, Mars and Venus, do not have one. And yet the Earth does, which is a good thing, as without one, there is a very thing. very real chance life would not have been able to arise here in the first place.

Thanks to the protective cocoon of this field, deadly solar radiation is deflected away from the planet's surface, allowing things to flourish without all that radiation breaking down our DNA, causing mutations and cancers. Scientists are still trying to figure out all the particulars of why certain planets have fields and certain others don't, but the current leading theory is that the Earth's core acts as a giant dynamo. It's a principle of physics that you can use electrical fields to create magnetic ones, and vice versa. This is the principle that power plants work under.

Moving a magnet through a coil of wires causes electrical current to start to flow, as that changing magnetic field exerts a force on the electrons present there. But similarly, the motion of electrons creates a magnetic field to form impermanent. perpendicular circles around the direction of motion in accordance with Faraday's law of induction. But the way this applies to the Earth's core is a delicate, complicated process. To start with, our core needs to be at least partially liquid, which fortunately is true. Above the solid inner core that lies at the heart of our planet is a liquid outer core, where the pressure isn't quite high enough to keep things in a solid state.

It's very hot in the outer core, though, 6,000 degrees Celsius at its warmest point, so hot that it rivals the surface temperature of the sun, which, when combined with the lower pressure compared to the inner core, is more than enough to keep the iron and nickel that makes it up flowing down there. The temperature drops as you move away from the center of the earth. This gets circulation going. What conductive material from the warmer, deeper regions of the outer core rises, then cools, then falls again, creating loops and currents of flowing material.

Our electrical field starts to be generated. But if there are many of these flowing loops, which in theory there would be, why does Earth only have one North Pole and one South Pole? Surely the created magnetic fields would be all over the place. Well, there is thought to be an extra force at play that takes all these fields and unifies them, pointing them in the same direction. This force is thought to be the Coriolis Effect. Dynamo theory states that the Coriolis effect causes these flows of iron to not rise and

fall as straight lines, but as spirals. The spinning of the Earth causes them to gently be spun in turn, creating giant springs. As each segment of each spring is creating a magnetic field in a circle around it, the net result is that the inside of these springs creates a solid, unified field that all moves in the same direction upwards, while the outside brings that magnetic field looping back down again and back in to the bottom of the coil. In short, it creates the well-known magnetic dipole north and south that we see today. However, if there's anything that you should take away from this, it's that this process is

precarious, as it is based on a lot of liquid iron essentially just sloshing around, which is not very consistent. Our magnetic field thus has little fluctuations and wobbles all the time. We see this in different ways, but a big one is that our North Pole is constantly moving. The scientists began keeping track of it in 1831, the North Pole has gradually shifted about 1,100 kilometers, leaving its original location in Canada and moving up towards Siberia. Its rate of motion is also increasing, going from 16 kilometers a year to roughly 55

kilometers a year. A big jump. This might still be akin to just the momentary wobbles of a spinning top though. Yes, it deviates somewhat, but it always remains roughly upright. That's a far cry from a complete reversal. However, scientists are certain that such reversals have happened before. They even have a specific number, 183 times in the last 83 million years. How do they know?

The answer lies locked in our Earth's surface iron. When magma erupts from the Earth's mantle, it can contain small amounts of iron. As these can move freely in the molten magma, they tend to orient themselves in the direction of the Earth's magnetic field. However, scientists noticed that there were layers of geological history where the iron was pointing one way and layers where it was pointing in the reverse direction. Their explanation, the entire pole of the planet had flipped. On average, these flips seem to happen every 450,000 years, although the last few have only

got 300,000 year gaps between them. Comparatively, it's been 750,000 years since the last reversal. You might think that we're overdue for one, and some have made that claim. However, scientists have found that there's little rhyme or reason to the timing of these flips. One of the longest gaps between flips took place in the Cretaceous. period and it lasted 40 million years. The record holder, the Keerman reverse Supercrone, was 312 to 262 million years ago, 50 million

years with no reversal. Scientists are still trying to understand what causes these flips. However, the current theory is that something, perhaps some interplay between the mantle and the outer core, causes a fluctuation in the core spinning. This disrupts the spiraling shapes of the core's flow, breaking them down. The magnetic field of the Earth stops being unified and generally becomes a sprawling mess, fighting against itself. Several poles might temporarily arise during this period of shifting magnetic confusion.

While in time things settle down and the spirals reassert themselves, it seems random as to which way they will do this, meaning about half the time our magnetic knowledge North Pole reappears over the geographical south. This reasserting can take 1,000 to 10,000 years. All right, but would that really be the end of the world? Why does this matter? Well, during that period before the poles reassert themselves, our Earth's magnetic field drops to as low as 10% of its current strength. In theory, this could leave us much more vulnerable to all the solar radiation space throws at us. We could see auroras reaching much further south during that time. Skin cancer rates would increase. Our satellites would find themselves with not enough shielding.

Radiation would fry their circuits, causing them to malfunction, shut down, and potentially even slowly fall from orbit. Our electrical grid would be much more vulnerable to solar storms, which could lead to large segments of the Earth's population without power. With no electricity or satellite communication, it would be a devastating blow to our global civilization. It could be worse than that. A research team from the University of New South Wales in Sydney even linked one of the most recent weakening of the magnetic field, the Lechamps event, a temporary 800-year wobble rather

than a full flip, to megafaunal mass extinctions in Australia, including the deaths of of diprodoton, giant Australian wombats, and procoptodon Goliah, giant kangaroos. Temporary wobbles like this are known as geomagnetic excursions rather than full reversals, and they happen over much shorter timeframes. Their transition periods can last as little as 200 years rather than 10,000, which can be much more difficult for species to adapt to. In their 2021 study, they argued that there was a spike in atmospheric radiocarbon levels caused by the collapse of the Earth's magnetic field, indicating climate shifts that could

have led to these extinctions. The timing lines up uncomfortably. But how real are these risks? Honestly, it's a mixed bag. A point in our favor is that other than this recent study, there is no indication that magnetic field reversals have ever coincided. with mass extinction events. It seems like many reversals have come and gone without affecting animal or plant life at all. And even in this study, such mass extinctions seem to have been limited

in scope. There is no claim from the researchers that this was a global phenomenon. Other parts of the world remained unaffected, even during the Lechamps event. It seems that a perfect storm might have been in play, where specific conditions over Australia left it more vulnerable to solar radiation. In terms of our global society, it's worth noting that these magnetic changes would take many lifetimes to complete, even at their fastest. This would be slow enough that we could come to terms with our new reality. If our satellites don't have enough shielding, we would have time to build some that were

better protected. If solar radiation becomes a larger risk, we could remain indoors more. cream might become more powerful to mitigate the dangers of cancers, if not remove them entirely. And according to NASA, even if our fields were to significantly weaken, it's not like we would be left without protection. Our atmosphere itself can catch radiation, meaning that we would remain safe from solar winds and cosmic radiation, at least to some degree. It would take far longer than 10,000 years for our atmosphere's ozone to be stripped away.

But I would be surprised if there wasn't at least some turmoil, at least while we adjusted to living under a reduced magnetic field. Big changes to how a society operates are always painful. And this isn't entirely hypothetical. Did you know the Earth's magnetic field has been steadily weakening for the last 200 years? It would take another 1,300 years for it to vanish completely, so there's plenty of time for it to stop its current downward trend. there's no reason to think this isn't just a temporary wobble.

But on top of that, there is also the South Atlantic anomaly to consider, a section of the Earth's magnetic field that is already showing signs of significant weakening that covers most of the space around South America and the neighboring ocean. This zone might not influence life on the ground, but is dangerous enough that it has fried satellites and threatened astronauts. The Hubble telescope has to turn itself off every time it flies through it. Imagine that, but across the entire globe. That's what we might expect while the poles are reversing.

Concerningly, the South Atlantic anomaly has been growing continuously since we started keeping track of it, possibly suggesting the approach of either another geomagnetic wobble like the DeSamps event, or that a full-blown reversal is already upon us. If it happens, it won't like to do that. be something that ends civilization as we know it. But if the study about Australian megafauna is correct, it isn't going to be without impact either. Species could die. Humans will have to accommodate a very different, more hazardous space environment. It's interesting to learn about geomagnetic reversals and their potential impacts on the planet, but while we are not likely

to see what happened in our lifetimes, for the generations of humanity after us, this might turn out to a lot less hypothetical. They might be seeing it firsthand. Above our planet's poles, an invisible force is at work. Hypothesize decades before we were able to measure it directly. This global energy force is responsible for sculpting our atmosphere and driving charged particles into space. It's also why some planets end up uninhabitable altogether. It's called the ambipolar field, and it's a force as fundamental to our Earth as gravity or magnetic fields. Although for the sake of the life on Earth, it's a good thing it isn't too strong. Recent breakthroughs from NASA's Endurance Mission have finally allowed scientists to solve

a 60-year-old mystery by measuring the ambipolar field for the first time, proving once and for all that our planet has a third global. energy field. I'm Alex McColgan and you're watching Astrum. Join me today as we unravel the mystery of our planet's ambipolar electric field, a phenomenon that not only powers the polar wind, but also has an enormous impact on our planet's habitability. Earth's magnetic field, depicted in this video as onion-like layers of lines, helps to shield

our atmosphere from dangerous solar energy and damaging cosmic rays. And the gravitational field, shown here as the white glow around our planet, not only keeps us planted on Earth's surface and stops our atmosphere from drifting away, but also provides valuable information in the study of Earth's changing climate, sea level rise, ocean circulation, and much more. As you can see, our magnetic and gravity fields are critical features that help make our planet habitable. And with the recent publication of a 2024 paper in the journal Nature, direct evidence has been found for a third energy field, the ambipolar field. To understand this energy field,

we need to talk about plasma. Like a solid, liquid or gas, plasma is another state of matter, which happens to make up 99% of all visible matter in the universe. Plasma is made of ionized particles and is responsible for several well-known phenomena on Earth like the Aurora Borealis and lightning. Plasma can form where atmospheric gas density becomes low enough to support the conditions for it and around 90 kilometers above Earth's surface. This plasma is made up of very lightweight, fast-moving particles, which get trapped along the Earth's magnetic field lines as they move away from the surface.

Around the majority of our planet, plasma encounters a barrier that limits its escape into space, known as the plasma pores. Here, plasma co-rotates along with Earth along its closed magnetic field lines. Until the mid-1960s, the prevailing model of our planet's magnetic field theorized that all of the magnetic field lines were closed, and the plasma remained tracked. So, what changed? We went to space. In the 1960s, the first spacecraft flying over our planet's north and south poles could actually

detect a supersonic wind of charged particles, or plasma, flowing out to space, including positively charged hydrogen and oxygen ions. This observation led scientists to start wondering whether the Earth's magnetic field model should have an open rather than a closed tail. At the time, scientists already knew that our atmosphere lost some particles to space due to thermal escape. This is a type of atmospheric escape that typically happens when the energy from sunlight heats our particles in our atmosphere, allowing them to reach escape velocity and break free of

our planet's gravitational pull, kind of like when a pot of water boils and steam evaporates. So it was no surprise that some particles would be a special. escaping into space, but something didn't quite add up. If energy from the sun were the only cause of atmospheric escape, one would expect the particles that were escaping into space to be heated. However, many in the stream were actually cold, with no signs of being heated, and yet they were travelling at supersonic speeds. It's hypothesized that there must be another invisible force driving this phenomenon, and

in 1968, the term polar wind was coined to describe it, leading to more research and theories into its cause and effects. The idea of a planet-wide electric field was developed to explain the polar wind. But when this was theorized in the 1960s, it was thought that the force was too weak to detect, And at the time, scientists were correct. The electric potential was so weak, it would require very sensitive instruments to measure, and that technology wouldn't be invented for several more decades. Enthusiasm to measure our planet's ambipolar field was spurred again in 2016, after

a clue came from the European Space Agency's Venus Express Mission. One of the reasons that Earth is hospitable for life is because of its water, while Venus today is dry and barren. However, billions of years ago, evidence suggests that Venus might have had abundant water like our own world does now. This raises the intriguing question. If Venus once had water, where did it all go? The ESA's Venus Express mission offered a potential explanation when it detected a 18

pin-volt electric potential around Venus, at least five times larger than expected. This marked the first successful measurement of an electric field on any planet, including Earth. The electric field surrounding Venus could pull positively charged ions like oxygen out of the atmosphere, draining it of the essential ingredients of water, like a vacuum cleaner siphoning particles out to space. Over time, this could have played a role in draining the planet of its once abundant water. This prompted a question much closer to home.

Does Earth have a similar electric field? And if so, why has our planet managed to hold onto its water? The electric potential measured around Venus was around 10 volts. For comparison, a standard car battery is 12 volts. But scientists expected our planet's electric potential to be as little as zero 0.3 volts, similar to a button battery you might find in a watch, and some 25 times weaker than the electric potential on Venus. It's this difference that may be a key reason why our Earth has been able to keep its water, and that's what inspired NASA's endurance team

to develop a new type of scientific instrument called a photoelectron spectrometer, to find Earth's weak electric field. The instrument is designed to be a new type of scientific instrument, measure the speed of electrons escaping from Earth's atmosphere as a way to reveal our planet's electric potential. Earlier, I explained thermal escape, and I mentioned that particles are able to escape from our atmosphere when they reach escape velocity. That escape velocity is a very specific, predictable speed, but the speed should be ever so slightly slowed by Earth's electric potential.

And so, by measuring that slowing effect at apogee, or the furthest point in Endurances orbit from Earth, the instrument would be able to measure the strength of the electric potential around our planet. Such a sensitive instrument would need to be launched at precisely the right location and time in order to ensure a chance at making the observation successful. The Svalbard rocket range was selected for the job. It's the northernmost range in the world, located in Svalbard. Norway, a group of islands in the Arctic Ocean. Here, the NASA Endurance Team would be able to

launch the instrument on a suborbital rocket through its magnetic North Pole, and on the 11th of May 2022, the team of international scientists did just that. Named after the ship that carried Ernest Shackleton's crew in their 1914 attempt to reach the South Pole and cross Antarctica, the Endurance Mission launched its suborbital rocket to an altitude of 768 kilometers, collecting data over 518 of those kilometers before splashing down 19 minutes later in the Greenland Sea. During its flight, the instrument measured a change of 0.55 volts in electric potential between 250 kilometers and 768 kilometers. Space scientist Glenn Collinson, the principal investigator, the principal investigator for NASA's endurance mission, said even though half a vault is almost nothing,

again almost about the strength of a watch battery, it's just the right amount to explain Earth's polar wind. This first ever direct measurement of Earth's electric field marked a pivotal moment in our understanding of this fundamental planet-wide energy force. The ambipolar field exists in what's called the ionosphere, a region that stretches across across three out of five of our atmospheric layers. Our atmosphere is divided into five main layers. The troposphere, also known as the lower atmosphere, only reaches about 20 kilometers about Earth's surface, and is where the majority of weather occurs.

Next is the stratosphere, which extends up to about 50 kilometers and contains most of our planet's ozone that protects us from ultraviolet radiation from the sun. This layer has very little circulation, and is where commercial airline's usually fly. Above the stratosphere is the mesosphere, extending up to about 85 kilometers. This is where meteors burn up near the bottom of the mesosphere layer are thick enough to slow them down. It's within the upper reaches of the mesosphere that the ionosphere begins, but its influence stretches far beyond that. Starting around 80 kilometers above the surface in the mesosphere, the ionosphere continues outward through the entire thermosphere layer from

about 85 to 600 kilometers. This is where auroras happen, and high energy ultraviolet and x-ray radiation are absorbed, creating charge particles. And finally, the ionosphere ends in the lower exosphere, which begins around 600 kilometers and continues out to about 10,000 kilometers from Earth's surface, where it fades into outer space. The exosphere is where many satellites orbit around our planet. As you can see, the ionosphere starts around 80 kilometers above sea level and stretches hundreds of kilometers into space, where it overlaps with Earth's magnetosphere, a region of space surrounding

Earth. Within this massive region of the ionosphere is where we find the ambipolar field, which is the area to begin at around 250 kilometers. While most of our atmosphere is composed of nitrogen, the upper region of our ionosphere is home to lighter elements like oxygen, hydrogen and helium. When photons from the sun collide with these elements in the upper atmosphere, they can knock electrons loose from the elements in a process called ionization, leaving positively charged particles called ions and negatively charged electrons.

Because of the opposite charges of the negative electrons and positive ions, They are attracted to each other and become tethered together by an electric field. It's this electric field that constitutes a major part of the ambipolar field. The electrons within the electric field are so light that the slightest push could send them flying out to space, while the ions are more than 1,800 times heavier than the electrons, and sink toward the ground due to gravity. subatomic tug of war works in both directions, but the upward tug from the energized electrons is able to just slightly overwhelm the force of gravity on the ions.

This outward pressure of ionospheric electrons is what creates the ambipolar field, depicted here as the sparkling blue glow around our planet. The upward lift inflates our planet's ionosphere and accelerates some ions enough to escape from the atmosphere, creating the polar wind along our poles magnetic field lines. What's more, the ambipolar fields can achieve this acceleration of plasmas without heating them, providing an explanation for the cold plasma scientists had detected escaping from the ionosphere. It's the bi-directional nature of the interaction between ions and electrons that gives the ambipolar field its name.

The Latin prefix, ambi, means both. And polar refers to the polar regions, where the electric field's effects are felt the strongest. Collinson, the Endurance Mission's primary investigator, called the ambipolar field an agent of chaos, stripping particles from our atmosphere away into space. Hydrogen ions make up the majority of the polar wind. They are so light, the ambipolar field's upward force of these electron ions is 10.6 times stronger than the force of gravity, leading the ions to accelerate up at supersonic speeds and escape from our atmosphere above the Earth's magnetic poles.

Scientists have found that our planet loses about 3 kilograms of hydrogen gas every second, or 95,000 tons per year. Additionally, the Earth also loses about 50 grams of helium per second, or 1,600 tons of helium gas per year, a smaller but still measurable amount, amount, and a much smaller amount of other gases like oxygen. However, not all of this is due to polar winds. It occurs through a combination of factors, including thermal escape and non-thermal escape mechanisms such as polar wind. But don't worry.

Despite our planet losing several thousand tons of its atmosphere to space every day, we are nowhere near running out of air. The planet won't run out of oxygen for a billion years. It will be another billion years after that before our oceans will have been depleted of most of their hydrogen. Around 4 billion years from now, our planet may look very similar to how Venus looks now. All of our water will have evaporated, and the greenhouse effect will have become strong enough to melt rock, leaving our planet a dry, lifeless world. Keep in mind that modern humans have only existed on this planet for around 300,000 years.

Our species would need to exist more than 3,300 times that length to be around in 1 billion years. While not really important on human timescales, it is still interesting to think about though. And while hydrogen ions may be the lightest and most common type of ion to escape in a polar wind, heavier particles also get a boost from the ambipolar electric field, helping to shape our atmosphere's structure and dynamics. How exactly? Well, now that we've measured the ambipolar field, scientists can delve into all the ways the ambipolar field shapes our atmosphere.

Take oxygen ions, for example. These heavy ions weigh half as much when they're immersed in the 0.55 volt ambipolar field. This effect increases the ionosphere's scale height by 271%, which means our atmosphere can remain denser at greater heights. and it would otherwise be able to. Endurance's discovery and measurement of the ambipolar field also provided an important key to understanding

why Earth has been able to hold on to much of its water up until this point, while our neighboring planet Venus was not able to do the same. It's theorized that any planet with an atmosphere may also have an electric field, and you may recall that earlier I said Venus's electric potential was measured to be around 10 volts, roughly 18 times stronger than the ambipolar field on our own planet. While Earth does lose a constant flow of particles to space both through the polar wind,

as well as other types of atmospheric escape, this effect would have likely been much more pronounced on Venus because of its stronger electric potential, leading to the loss of heavier particles like the ones that make up water. The fact that our ambipolar field is so weak may be an important part of why our planet has been able to hold onto its water. We've only just started to explore the depths of how the ambipolar field has influenced our planet and life on Earth, and the Endurance scientists have said there are already plans for additional measurements of our planet's ambipolar field in the future.

Like its predecessor, the new rocket will also carry the legacy of a long-past Arctic explorer, named after the Resolute, a ship that set off to explore the Arctic in 1850. Now that we've finally been able to confirm and measure the ambipolar field strength, and with a follow-up mission already planned to take more measurements, scientists can start asking some of the bigger and more exciting questions, like what it means for Earth's complex atmospheric dynamics, and how it helps to govern planetary evolution. And doesn't the potential insights we stand to gain from this research feel electric? The Earth's atmosphere may look empty, but it's really a complex and dynamic place, swirling with gaseous matter and thermal energy,

some of its most spectacular activity is best viewed at night. If you've ever watched a lightning storm or a meteor shower, the breathtaking Aurora Borealis in the north, or the shimmering Aurora Australis in the south, then you know what an incredible light show the sky can put on. But in recent years, with the help of the of highly sensitive cameras, researchers have been able to document a number of unusual, previously unrecorded light-producing phenomena. These occurrences, which happen high in the

Earth's atmosphere, are known as transient luminous events. What are these strange phenomena? Why are they so elusive? And what can they teach us about the hidden workings of our atmosphere? I'm Alex McColgan and you're watching Astrum. Join me today as we look at incredible images of transient luminous events as we explore and unravel some of the most mysterious and elusive phenomenon in the night sky. Let's begin with a remarkable image. It looks like a cross between a lightning storm and a jellyfish, doesn't it? This is a red sprite and the formation you're looking at is fittingly called a jellyfish. It's incredibly big, spanning up to 50 kilometres and originates at an altitude of 70 to 80 kilometres above the earth. Sprites are short-lived

events, lasting 3 to 5 milliseconds, and they travel downwards at blazing speeds, reaching 10% the speed of light. For years, sprites were only rumoured to exist. Reports can be found as far back as the 18th century, but a theoretical basis wasn't published until 1925, when physicist C.T.R. Wilson speculated that the electrical breakdown could occur in the upper atmosphere. However, despite years of unverified sightings, it would take more than six decades for their existence to be confirmed. So what are sprites? Unlike lightning, which is extremely hot, sprites are sprites.

are cold plasma events, much like the reaction inside a fluorescent tube. Let's think about that fluorescent light for a moment. It requires a power source to ionize the gases trapped inside in order to emit light. As it happens, Sprites also require an electrical discharge to trigger their fluorescent reaction. You see, inside a storm cloud, there is friction between rising ice crystals which become positively charged, and sinking soft hail particles, which become negative. These positively charged crystals in turn cause a negative shield layer to form in the air above

them. When a positive discharge happens in the form of a lightning strike, the cloud becomes neutralized, but the negative shield layer remains. We now believe it is this unstable, negatively charged shield layer that causes electrical breakdown in the upper atmosphere, producing sprites. It is even possible that sprites aren't especially rare. What makes them incredibly difficult to observe is that they occur high in the ionosphere, where they are often hidden by the storm systems that produce them.

So to see a sprite, you need a clear sight line over a thunderstorm, or perhaps a camera positioned above it. As you can see here, the International Space Station was lucky enough to get one in action. Sprites glow red because under the low-pressure conditions where they originate, nitrogen emits low-frequency red light where its molecules get excited. Compare this to auroras, which are usually green. That's because, at the higher elevation where auroras occur, Earth's atmosphere has greater levels of oxygen,

whose molecules fluoresce green when they get excited. But sprites don't always produce red light. Sometimes a sprite will set off a secondary event at a level. lower elevation. These secondary events, or tendrils, often appear blue. While their light is also produced by nitrogen, the higher pressure causes them to glow blue and near ultraviolet. As a result, some larger sprites, like the jellyfish we saw earlier, have a remarkable appearance, glowing red at the top and blue at the tentacles. Spryed tendrils aren't the only TLEs with a bluish tint. This event is known as a blue jet.

Discovered only recently, blue jets are a distinct phenomenon also initiated by storm systems. In these events, the positive charge at the top of a storm cloud forms a leader with a negative shield layer above the cloud, producing a discharge that propagates upwards. This excites the nitrogen, making a spectacular cone-shaped jet that glows blue. Why blue? Well, remember what we said about how atmospheric pressure affects excited nitrogen gases. Blue jets occur much lower in the atmosphere than Sprites, which is why they fluoresce a different colour. There are also smaller TLEs called blue starters, but scientists believe they are simply

failed blue jets. These diminutive cousins only reach 20 kilometres above the Earth. At the other end of the family is a separate phenomenon known as the gigantic jet. and it occurs much higher in the atmosphere, which is why the upper portion changes colour from blue to red. We'll leave today with one of the rarest and least understood TLEs. These green or red phenomena are known as elves, a quaint acronym that stands for a mouthful. Its full name is emission of light and very low frequency perturbations

due to electromagnetic pulse sources. Try saying that five times first. Unlike sprites and jets, elves are diffuse, ring-shaped phenomena that occur even higher in the atmosphere. And unlike what the name suggests, they are huge. Elves can grow up to 400 kilometers in diameter and occur 100 kilometers above the earth. But despite their size, they are extremely short-lived events. They only last a millisecond, so brief that they can't be seen by the naked eye.

While little is known about elves, we believe they are caused by an electromagnetic pulse produced by the discharge of an underlying thunderstorm. So, there we have it. An introduction to some of the most spectacular transient luminous events that have been confirmed in recent years. What other luminous phenomena may be lurking in the Earth's atmosphere? It's tantalizing to think about. And because this is still a fairly new field of research,

we can only imagine what new surprises may be. in store for us. Want more videos about weird atmospheric phenomena on Earth? Let me know in the comments. I'm happy to announce we have a weekly newsletter to keep up with all the discoveries in our cosmos and our designer Peter has made the most beautiful email you'll ever receive. Sign up with the link down below. It's the best way to stay connected between videos.

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