God, what an awful site.

Here's the paper, in PRL: http://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.117...

Advertising has been getting stupider and more insulting, almost aggressively so.

I don't really want to use ad blockers, but I have to, this stuff is nauseating.

> It also indicates a transient weakening of Earth’s magnetic shield

One of the theories that I read about when I was a kid was the geomagnetic swap. It would obviously be decades to millennia off, but would this possibly be an oracle of such an event?

Genuinely curious, I'm not implying that this is actually the case.

So glad you got here first.

Is this something that would happen every time there's a solar storm, or did something else temporarily weaken the earth's magnetic field around the same time, making the effects of the storm worse?

This is something that could happen anytime there is a solar storm depending on the details. The solar storm throws off huge amounts of electrically charged particles. As these particles hit the Earth, they create electrical currents in the atmosphere (after all, electrical currents are just charged particles moving). Electric currents induce magnetic fields. If the flow is large enough, the magnetic field can be locally much larger than the Earth's thereby canceling the Earth's field out, changing its direction, or even reversing it. This is why compasses can jump around during an auroral storm (during the northern lights).

The "crack" in the magnetic field is nothing novel. That cosmic rays were allowed in follows naturally. The (mildly) interesting thing is that it was then detected by this muon tracking telescope.

I don't know whether there's any relationship here -- at all.

But I'm reminded of concern that the earth's magnetic field may be destabilizing with transient weakening and variability, in advance of its reversal. This concern has been gradually mounting for a number of years, but so far as I know, there is no overriding, conclusive analysis, yet.

The article mentions that the study "...may hold clues for a better understanding of future superstorms that could cripple modern technological infrastructure on Earth,...".

What kind of crippling of modern tech infrastructure are we talking about? Electrical interference? Radiation overdose that leads to... data loss? Could someone more familiar with the topic enlighten me?

Stuff like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_1989_geomagnetic_storm or worse - e.g. EM waves knocking out satellites - having the GPS system vanish would have quite severe impact.

> A crack has been detected in the Earth's magnetic shield, which allowed deadly cosmic ray particles to seep through into the atmosphere.

Deadly in general or deadly this time? If this time, how deadly?

They're way worse than UV rays since they're far higher energy, so if this is as bad as the ozone hole it could be pretty bad.

ok, but their flux is vastly lower.

Interesting. I use AdBlock on this page and the ads keep popping. Have they a way to bypass AdBlock? (maybe with websockets I dunno). I can't really read the article.

I got nothing with uBlock.

What? Can you explain your metaphors

It is a line from Doctor Strange, in which three Sanctums project a magical field that protects/hides the Earth, which would otherwise be assimilated by Dormammu into his Dark Dimension.

I find it humorous that we hear about cracks in the real Earth's magnetic field just as this movie comes out.