Earth's Protective Force Field

What is the sun made of?

Plasma

What is plasma?

A gas so hot that the nuclei cannot hold onto any electrons. The gas is a bunch of protons and electrons moving around independently

What does the electrified plasma gas result in?

Electric currents which in turn make thier own magnetic fields

As the Sun rotates what can happen to the magnetic field?

It can get twisted by the rotating plasma

The twisting of the Suns magnetic field results in what?

Patches of the Sun’s surface to get cut off from the rest of the surface and cool off creating sunspots

How is the Suns magnetic pole switching different from Earths?

The Suns magnetic poles switch with some regularity

How many years pass before the suns magnetic poles switch?

11 years

Before the Suns poles switch what happens?

Lots of sunspots appear and there is a lot of magnetic twisting

What happens when the magnetic fields of the Sun get twisted too much?

It stretches out causing chunks of the Suns surface to be ejected

What do we call incidents of the suns surface being ejected off of the Sun?

Coronal mass ejections (CMEs)

What was the Carrington Event?

A big coronal mass ejection that hit earth creating extremely bright auroras that were visible all over the world, as well as electrical disturbances

What infamous electrical disturbance happened during the Carrington event?

Telegraph wires caught on fireW

What was the most recent solar maximum?

July 2025

What is solar wind?

Individual protons and electrons that are constantly streaming from the suns surface

What happens to solar wind when they come under the influence of the Earths magnetic field?

They get deflected, either entirely, or towards the poles

When solar wind particles fall into the atmosphere how do they interact with atoms in the air?

They break atoms apart turning them into ions

What happens when ions find another stray electron?

They capture it since atoms always want to be electrically neutral

What happens when electrons get captured by ions?

They lose energy emitting it as light

What color does Oxygen tend to glow?

Green

What color does hydrogen glow?

Purple

Where have spacecraft seen aurora apart from Earth?

Saturn and Jupiter

True or False, Earth is the only inner planet with a strong magnetic field

True

How can solar wind affect atmospheric molecues?

It can knock them away from a planets gravity

Where do the most extreme magnetic fields found in nature come from?

Neutron stars

What are neutron stars?

The exposed cores of massive collapsed stars

What does the strong magnetism of neutron stars result from?

Neutron stars rotate hundreds of times per second

how many times stronger are neutron starts magnetic field than earths?

Billion of times

What would happen if you got anywhere near a neutron star?

Your body would become magnetized and the charged particles in your atoms would accelerate so quickly that you would disintegrate