Magnetic fields play an important—if sometimes underappreciated—part in planetary systems. Without a strong magnetic field, planets can end up as a barren wasteland like Mars, or they could indirectly ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. David Bressan is a geologist who covers curiosities about Earth. Without its magnetic field, life on Earth would not be possible ...

As black holes feed, they pull material into a disk around them. The material orbiting in this disk gets heated to extreme temperatures, and so it becomes a plasma — a state of matter in which some of ...

In the late 1800s, the French naturalist Camille Viguier proposed an idea that would be dismissed and forgotten for more than a century. He speculated that birds and other animals could navigate with ...

Geophysicists have modeled how Earth’s magnetic field could form even when its core was fully liquid. By removing the effects of viscosity in their simulation, they revealed a self-sustaining dynamo ...

The mechanism that can cause a rapidly expanding plasma—the superhot state of matter harnessed in fusion energy systems—to ...

While we have sent probes billions of kilometres into interstellar space, humans have barely scratched the surface of our own planet, not even making it through the thin crust. Roughly 3,000km beneath ...

How the universe got its large magnetic fields has remained one of the stickiest outstanding problems in astrophysics. Now, researchers have proposed a novel solution: a giant "dust battery" operating ...

The reversal could actually have a beneficial effect on Earth. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. The sun is on the verge of a ...