The Earth is the only planet in our solar system known to be able to support life, and scientists now believe that part of that is due to a magnetosphere bubble protecting its atmosphere from solar flares as it makes its travel around the sun. The magnetosphere acts just like a protective bubble to deflect possible severe impact coming from these major sun eruptions.
Magnetosphere Bubble Helps to Protect Life
For instance, the second planet from the Sun is Venus, which has no magnetosphere bubble like the Earth does. Venus is in fact 10 times hotter than the planet Earth with an inhospitable atmosphere. This is thought to be caused in part, by what is called coronal mass ejections or CMEs from the sun, wherein material from the sun is thrown out during a flare-up that can cause atmospheric problems, especially with no magnetic bubble for protection.
It is also thought that a magnetosphere bubble around a world could be necessary to support life, as we know it, according to Glyn Collinson. Collinson is the first author of a scientific paper from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The paper appeared in the Journal of Geophysical Research.
Venus Mission Proves Magnetosphere Bubble Saves Oxygen
Collinson came to this conclusion after getting data from the European Space Agency’s Venus Express mission in 2006. The mission took 8 years to complete. During this eight-year mission, it was shown that even a slow moving, small emission of a CME into Venus’ atmosphere caused massive quantities of oxygen to be ripped from its surface. In addition, it has been noted that several of the spacecraft that the Earth has launched into space have been witness to problems attributed to similar outbreaks of solar flares or CMEs.
Collinson says that knowing the fact that a magnetosphere bubble is one of the reasons the Earth can support life is very valuable as it can be used to help the world to discover other planets that possibly contain life. Being able to study both the Earth’s magnetosphere bubble and those other places like Venus that don’t, give scientists valuable insight for future studies of planetary life.
The Earth’s magnetosphere bubble, according to these studies, shows that it may be one of the only things between the harsh CMEs and solar flares that emit from the sun regularly as the Earth makes its travel around it. While every living thing on the planet would die without the energy and warmth of the sun, it is clearly still a very dangerous star that could cause great harm under other types of circumstances.
The conclusion is that without the magnetosphere bubble surrounding the Earth, it is likely that our planet would not be as hospitable as it is currently and would not be able to support life as it is now on its travel around the sun.
Watch this video for beautiful images of our Earth looking very like a hospital planet with an exoplanetary vibe:
https://youtu.be/i-95xwMXu5c
