At Science Daily: How magnetism could help explain Earth’s formation
A peculiar property of the Earth’s magnetic field could help us to work out how our planet was created 4.5 billion years ago, according to a new scientific assessment. There are several theories about how the Earth and the Moon were formed, most involving a giant impact. They vary from a model where the impacting object strikes the newly formed Earth a glancing blow and then escapes, through to one where the collision is so energetic that both the impactor and the Earth are vaporized. Now scientists at the University of Leeds and the University of Chicago have analysed the dynamics of fluids and electrically conducting fluids and concluded that the Earth must have been magnetized either before the impact Read More ›