NASA scientists have studied how the magnetic field and oxygen content in Earth’s atmosphere have changed over the last 540 million years. They found a high degree of correlation between the two graphs. This means that these two processes may be somehow related.
Atmospheric oxygen and magnetic field
Scientists from the Goddard Space Flight Center, which is part of NASA, have published a study concerning two things that are essential for life on Earth: atmospheric oxygen and the magnetic field. According to the findings, their fluctuations may be interrelated.
The Earth’s magnetic field protects our planet from high-energy cosmic particles. It is generated by the flow of matter in the outer core and mantle of our planet. At the same time, atmospheric oxygen is constantly involved in complex biogeochemical processes that occur on the surface of our planet.
At first glance, these two processes seem unrelated, but in fact they have a common point of contact. High-energy rays, from which the magnetic field protects the planet, destroy oxygen molecules in the atmosphere. Therefore, theoretically, air suitable for breathing could disappear if the magnetic dipole disappears.
But in reality, this assumption remains a theory, because no one has observed the process. And it was precisely this problem that scientists attempted to solve.
Changes occurring over half a billion years
In fact, it is quite possible to determine the strength of the Earth’s magnetic field 10, 50, or 200 million years ago. Because iron-bearing rocks formed during the relevant period remain magnetized in a certain way.
In the same way, the level of oxygen in the atmosphere affects the formation of certain minerals, and their content in rocks from a specific period can tell us how breathable the air was at different times. Therefore, scientists only had to collect all this data and create graphs.
And it turns out that these graphs are very similar to each other. The correlation coefficient is 0.72. In particular, the magnetic field strength and oxygen levels in the Earth’s atmosphere reached their maximum between 330 and 220 million years ago.
All this does not necessarily mean that the intensity of the magnetic field directly determines how much oxygen there is in the Earth’s atmosphere, but these two processes are clearly related in some way. Further research will show how accurate a particular theory is.
According to phys.org, science.nasa.gov
