Outer Core - Effect On Life

Effect On Life

Without the outer core, life on Earth would be very different. Convection of liquid metals in the outer core creates the Earth's magnetic field. This magnetic field extends outward from the Earth for several thousand kilometers, and creates a protective bubble around the Earth that deflects the solar wind. Without this field, a larger proportion of the solar wind would directly strike the Earth's atmosphere. The presumed effect would be to strip the Earth's atmosphere away slowly. This is hypothesized to have happened to the Martian atmosphere, rendering the planet effectively lifeless.

Read more about this topic:  Outer Core

Famous quotes containing the words effect and/or life:

    It has never been in my power to sustain ... I can pass swiftly from one effect to another, but I cannot fix one, and dwell on it, with that superb concentration which seems to me the special attribute of the tragic actress.
    Ellen Terry (1847–1928)

    All conservatives are such from personal defects. They have been effeminated by position or nature, born halt and blind, through luxury of their parents, and can only, like invalids, act on the defensive. But strong natures, backwoodsmen, New Hampshire giants, Napoleons, Burkes, Broughams, Websters, Kossuths, are inevitable patriots, until their life ebbs, and their defects and gout, palsy and money, warp them.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)