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As well as deflecting the solar wind, the Earth's magnetic field deflects cosmic rays, high-energy charged particles that are mostly from outside the Solar System. Many cosmic rays are kept out of the Solar System by the Sun's magnetosphere, or heliosphere. [30] By contrast, astronauts on the Moon risk exposure to radiation.
However, at high altitudes, the magnetic field is significantly distorted by the solar wind and its solar magnetic field. On the dayside of Earth, the magnetic field is significantly compressed by the solar wind to a distance of approximately 65,000 kilometers (40,000 mi). Earth's bow shock is about 17 kilometers (11 mi) thick [12] and located ...
The Earth's magnetic field lines are horizontal at the magnetic equator. Solar heating and tidal oscillations in the lower ionosphere move plasma up and across the magnetic field lines. This sets up a sheet of electric current in the E region which, with the horizontal magnetic field, forces ionization up into the F layer, concentrating at ± ...
Plasmas and their embedded magnetic fields affect the formation and evolution of planets and planetary systems. The heliosphere shields the Solar System from galactic cosmic radiation. Earth is shielded by its magnetic field, protecting it from solar and cosmic particle radiation and from erosion of the atmosphere by the solar wind.
Astronauts' overall exposure was actually dominated by solar particles once outside Earth's magnetic field. The total radiation received by the astronauts varied from mission-to-mission but was measured to be between 0.16 and 1.14 rads (1.6 and 11.4 mGy), much less than the standard of 5 rem (50 mSv) [c] per year set by the United States Atomic ...
Magnetic north versus ‘true north’ At the top of the world in the middle of the Arctic Ocean lies the geographic North Pole, the point where all the lines of longitude that curve around Earth ...
Solar flares and coronal mass ejections tend to occur near sunspots, dark patches as big as Earth that are located near the most intense portions of the sun’s shifting magnetic field.
Illustration of the dynamo mechanism that generates the Earth's magnetic field: convection currents of fluid metal in the Earth's outer core, driven by heat flow from the inner core, organized into rolls by the Coriolis force, generate circulating electric currents, which supports the magnetic field.