Generated by rotation of a huge mass of liquid iron in our planet’s core and invisible to the naked eye, Earth’s magnetic field is vital to the existence of human life as it provides protection against harmful cosmic radiation.
And while one can see how solar particles interact with this magnetic field – a phenomenon known as aurora borealis – a team of scientists from the Technical University of Denmark now reveals what such an interaction sounds like.
In order to accomplish this feat, the team used data provided by sources such as the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Swarm satellites, which were launched in 2013 to study Earth’s magnetic field, and “used these magnetic signals to manipulate and control a sonic representation of the core field”, said project supporter and musician Klaus Nielsen.
Last week, the team also offered people visiting the Solbjerg Square in Copenhagen to hear these sounds, by installing a system of over 30 loudspeakers there, with each of these devices representing “a different location on Earth” and showing “how our magnetic field has fluctuated over the last 100 000 years”, Nielsen explained in a statement shared on ESA website.
“The rumbling of Earth’s magnetic field is accompanied by a representation of a geomagnetic storm that resulted from a solar flare on 3 November 2011, and indeed it sounds pretty scary,” he added.