Crack Found In Magnetic Shield Of Earth

The world’s largest and most sensitive cosmic ray monitor located in India has recorded a burst of galactic cosmic rays that indicates a crack in the Earth’s magnetic shield. The burst, recorded by the GRAPES-3 muon telescope located at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research’s Cosmic Ray Laboratory in Tamil Nadu, occurred when a giant cloud of plasma effected from the solar corona, and moving with a speed of 2.5 million kilometres per hour struck our planet, causing compression of Earth’s magnetosphere from 11 to 4 times the radius of Earth. It triggered a severe geomagnetic storm that generated aurora borealis and radio signal blackouts in many high latitude countries, according to the study published in the journal Physical Review Letters this week. Earth’s magnetosphere extends over a radius of a million kilometres and acts as the first line of defense, shielding us from the continuous flow of solar and galactic cosmic rays, thus protecting life on our planet form these high intensity energetic radiations.