Magnetic Fields

Magnetic Fields

 

I love the band the Magnetic Fields, but I don't know anything about magnetic fields. So I thought I would do a bit of research and talk about these little guys in a way that even music nerds could understand.

Electric fields are present in everything. Although these fields once were just a theory, a scientist named Michael Faraday hypothesized these fields to be fact and proved them to be real in nature. Modern day scientists have not only given these electromagnetic fields equations, but they have also found them to be more prevalent in nature. Also, scientists fear that electromagnetic fields found in everyday appliances could play a dangerous part in the health of humans.

Electromagnetic fields are not a new discovery. In fact, the concept of electromagnetic fields was devised in 1845 by a scientist named Michael Faraday. He hypothesized that currents made an electric “tension” and that tension made an “electrotonic state,” otherwise known as a polarization of molecules which transmitted the electric force.

Eventually, Faraday abandoned this theory of “electrotonic forces” and made a new hypothesis of “lines of force.” A person, he said, could see this forces by using a magnet with iron fillings.

Faraday, who made many important scientific discoveries, one wouldn’t have thought he would ever become a scientist. Faraday, an Englishman, was a bookbinder who happened to be interested in electricity.  Not only that, but he also had no grasp on mathematics and had trouble understanding other scientist’s writings.

Electromagnetic fields play a big part in everyday things found in nature, such as water. In all water, electric fields strengthen the bonding between water molecules. Also, electron emission was found when supercooled water was frozen.

Many natural phenomena, like auroras, have been linked to electromagnetic sources. Sky cameras have found that aurora displays are linked with accelerated electron fields from space. These electron fields are on the Earth’s magnetic field lines. More recently, satellite photographs have proven the sky camera’s originally pictures to be correct.

Göran Marklund and his team of scientists proved these electric field’s existence.

According to a paper written by Marklund and his colleague’s, an electromagnetic current flows to Earth from space, goes through the ionosphere and then back into space.

In a figure, he draws two accelerated regions and explains that the electric fields of these regions have electric fields that accelerate electrons to the high energy fields that are needed to create aurora.

Some scientists have had trouble uniting the more recent studies of electron fields causing auroras with the older, more established plasma theory. The plasma theory said cold electrons in the ionosphere would move in the opposite direction to the electron field and cancel it.