The Discovery of the Earth’s Electric Field: The “Polar Wind” and Its Impact

“This field has been here since the beginning, along with gravity and magnetism. Although it is weak, it is incredibly important, counteracting gravity and literally lifting the heavens.“. With these words, Glyn Collinson, Endurance mission science officer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center summarized the results of more than sixty years of intense research. NASA scientists have finally detected an invisible electric field enveloping Earth, dubbed the “polar wind”. This field explains how Earth’s atmosphere escapes easily and rapidly over the North and South Polesinfluencing the shape of our planet’s upper atmosphere.

NASA also released a video of the Endurance mission

The presence of this field was first hypothesized over sixty years ago, when several spacecraft flying over the Earth’s poles in the late 1960s detected a stream of atmospheric particles escaping into space at supersonic speeds. However, the technology at the time did not allow for direct detection of the field responsible for this phenomenon. It wasn’t until 2016 that Collinson and his collaborators began developing sensors specifically for the international sounding rocket Endurance mission.which allowed us to collect crucial data in May 2022. NASA’s Endurance mission was thus able to record a minimal variation in electric potential of just 0.55 volts. However, this minimal variation is sufficient to justify the escape of charged particles from the poles, or the “polar wind”.

“
Half a volt is almost nothing, it is more or less the voltage of a watch battery.
“, says Collinson, and yet the hydrogen ions are influenced by this force field, experiencing an outward push 10.6 times stronger than gravity.. “This force is more than enough to counteract gravity; in fact, it is enough to launch them upwards into space at supersonic speeds.“, explains Alex GlocerEndurance project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and co-author of the article published on Nature
.

In addition to providing an explanation for the phenomenon of atmospheric escape, the Earth’s electric field has significant implications for understanding similar processes on other planets in our solar system, such as Venus and Mars. The discovery opens new avenues for investigating the evolution of the Earth’s atmosphere and its impact on the formation of the oceans. “Now that we’ve finally measured this field, we can start asking some of these bigger, more exciting questions.,” Collinson concluded.

Image credits NASA/Space Goddard