The dread hole in the magnetosphere does not portend a 2012 doomsday
Artist’s rendition of Earth’s magnetosphere. NASA photo in the public domain.
This is an article published online on December 16, 2008, almost four years ago. Yet, when I viewed the sensationalist videos about the terrible hole in the magnetosphere, the videos sounded as if the huge hole was letting in damage from the sun that was going to annihilate all life on earth at any moment. Well, it’s been four years since this “hole” was discovered. At that time, it was not the first hole discovered. The main difference with previous holes in the magnetosphere was the way this one acted.
Dec. 16, 2008: NASA’s five THEMIS spacecraft have discovered a breach in Earth’s magnetic field ten times larger than anything previously thought to exist. Solar wind can flow in through the opening to “load up” the magnetosphere for powerful geomagnetic storms. But the breach itself is not the biggest surprise. Researchers are even more amazed at the strange and unexpected way it forms, overturning long-held ideas of space physics. . . .
Space physicists have long believed that holes in Earth’s magnetosphere open only in response to solar magnetic fields that point south. The great breach of June 2007, however, opened in response to a solar magnetic field that pointed north.
That doesn’t mean something terrible and new is happening. It only means that scientists are learning new things about the earth, sun and solar system and this is something new they have discovered due to these new sophisticated instruments on the THEMIS spacecraft.
Carol Chapman, author of the End of the World 2012 Book and EBook, and the director/producer of the End of the World 2012 Movie
