A new paper has issued a chilling and terrifying warning: falling space junk could compromise Earth's magnetic field.
Earth’s orbit is absolutely littered with space junk, and every new rocket we send into space creates another opportunity for trash to be created. We know it’s a problem, and many are working on solutions that could help the junk fall back to Earth. Now, though, a controversial new paper warns that falling space junk could actually weaken Earth’s magnetic field. It’s an intriguing proposition and one that has garnered some support as well as some skepticism.
But it does raise some intriguing questions that we will probably need to answer at some point. Most notable is the question of what happens to the dust that falling space junk leaves behind. The author of the new research argues that it could settle in the upper part of the ionosphere, where it could create a “conductive net” around our planet. This net would then likely cause the magnetosphere, which typically extends for thousands of miles into space, to be trapped under the conductive net.
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