For the past week I’ve been in a remote part of northern Minnesota, vacationing at my Grandmother’s house. In that part of world you can pretty much throw a stick and hit a lake, which is part of the reason it is known as the Land of 10,000 lakes. Being in a region with so much water tends to give the impression that Earth is water-rich world.
Magnetic Reversal
The magnetic field of the Earth is often portrayed as a large magnet that runs through the center of the Earth, with the magnetic poles located basically at the north and south poles of the Earth, but this is only a rough approximation. Earth’s magnetic field is generated in its core. The core of the Earth has a solid central region surrounded by a fluid outer region. This outer region undergoes convection, and its motion generates the magnetic field through what is known as a dynamo effect.
Never a Miscommunication
The Earth and Moon are slowly moving apart. The moon’s distance from the Earth is not constant, because the Moon’s orbit is not perfectly circular. Over the course of a month the moon comes as close as 363,000 km and as far as 405,000 km due to the eccentricity of its orbit. However its average distance is slowly increasing.
Flare Up
Carbon 14 is radioactive, and decays over time. It is one of the ways we can date the age of living things long after they’ve died. The reason is because carbon 14 is generated in the atmosphere when high energy particles strike nitrogen atoms in the upper atmosphere, and living thing utilize that carbon while they are alive. Once they die the carbon 14 in them isn’t replenished, so as the carbon 14 decays it over time it gives us a measure of how long an organism has been dead.
Aurora
Aurora occur when high energy particles strike the Earth’s upper atmosphere. The occur largely at the polar regions because of an interaction between the charged particles and the Earth’s magnetic field.
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