            
              Key Points
A rocket team reports the first successful detection of Earth’s ambipolar electric field: a weak, planet-wide electric field as fundamental as Earth’s gravity and magnetic fields.
First hypothesized more than 60 years ago, the ambipolar electric field is a key driver of the “polar wind,” a steady outflow of charged particles into space that occurs above Earth’s poles.
This electric field lifts charged particles in our upper atmosphere to greater heights than they would otherwise reach and may have shaped our planet’s evolution in ways yet to be explored.

[–] Sam_Bass@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago (3 children)

be cool if we could create that field at will with an ability to strengthen it enough to propel a manned craft beyond our solar system

[–] Thorry84@feddit.nl 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

It's just an electric field man, we create those all the time. The interesting part is that we figured out how this field is created that causes the outflow of particles at the poles. That outflow has been known for a long time, the field has been theorized to exist for a long time (how else would the outflow occur?), they've now just confirmed it does in fact work the way they thought it worked.

While this is cool science and very interesting for people that study for example geology, it isn't changing the world or anything. Don't let your head be turned by sensationalist media. This isn't new physics, the field is very weak and it's a normal EM field just like the ones we use every day all day.

In principle it's possible to launch something into space using an EM field. That's called a rail gun and the military has prototypes that shoot projectiles at hypersonic speeds. However due to the forces and currents involved, the thing is massive, requires a whole lot of power and cooling and as a bonus self destructs after one or two shots. The acceleration also means that it's great for shooting at stuff and destroying it, but not that useful for transport.

A rocket on the other hand can be very small (the Electron rocket is only 14 meters and can put 300kg into LEO), easy to transport, easy to maintain and fuel and with a much smaller chance of self destructing. Thus we use rockets to put stuff into orbit.

Beyond the solar system is totally impossible with our current tech. Voyager 1 and 2 might be considered interstellar probes, but they are tiny and took 50 years to get there. And they are going so slow, that while they have left our solar system, they aren't really going anywhere. It will take them tens of thousands of years to even make it to the Oort cloud of our solar system, which by some metrics is still inside our solar system. We are currently struggling getting humans to the moon for a few days, so beyond the solar system is firmly in the realm of fiction.

[–] seaQueue@lemmy.world 0 points 2 months ago

Even being able to generate enough lift to send a payload into orbit would be an amazing advancement. We can solve propelling craft out of the solar system later, first we need an economical way to get off planet that isn't just burning fuel to lift fuel.

[–] icerunner_origin@startrek.website 0 points 2 months ago

Why propel spacecraft when we can dream big. Shift the whole planet! Muahaha.