Researchers have found a new electric field in the atmospheric environment of Earth – an electric field as ubiquitous and significant as gravity and magnetism. This field, called the ambipolar electric field, might well shape the entire atmosphere and the very outflow of particles into space.

While theory suggests that such an ambipolar electric field must exist from the very early Universe onward, the first quantitative measurements of such a field came recently from a NASA mission that was published in Nature.

An ambipolar electric field is created by the interaction of Earth’s magnetic field with the atmosphere’s charged particles. These particles – positively charged ions and negatively charged electrons – are jiggling around because of the thermal energy of the atmosphere. That motion, interacting with Earth’s magnetic field, drives the ionosphere and the lower layers of the atmosphere into a state of drift.

It peaks high up where the thin atmosphere allows the charged particles to play more freely, and near the magnetic equator, where the magnetic field is strongest.

Aside from its role in forming the horizontal electric field, the ambipolar electric field is hypothesized to shape the top of the atmosphere – the ionosphere, a layer of the atmosphere filled with charged particles. The ambipolar field also is purported to affect the outflow of particles from Earth’s atmosphere into space.

The discovery of the ambipolar electric field promises to advance our understanding of a variety of atmospheric phenomena, from lightning and its effects on the lower atmosphere to the coupling between the atmosphere and space.

©️ The Rocky Mountain Dispatch LLC. 2024