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Oct 15, 2024

Sound of Earth’s magnetic flip 41 000 years ago

Posted by in category: media & arts

Approximately 41 000 years ago, Earth’s magnetic field briefly reversed during what is known as the Laschamp event. During this time, Earth’s magnetic field weakened significantly—dropping to a minimum of 5% of its current strength—which allowed more cosmic rays to reach Earth’s atmosphere.

Scientists at the Technical University of Denmark and the German Research Centre for Geosciences used data from ESA’s Swarm mission, along with other sources, to create a sounded visualisation of the Laschamp event. They mapped the movement of Earth’s magnetic field lines during the event and created a stereo sound version which is what you can hear in the video.

The soundscape was made using recordings of natural noises like wood creaking and rocks falling, blending them into familiar and strange, almost alien-like, sounds. The process of transforming the sounds with data is similar to composing music from a score.

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Comments so far


  1. Becky says:

    Interesting.

  2. Jonathon Moseley says:

    So glad we were there 41,000 years ago to witness this

  3. Jonathon Moseley says:

    It is interesting though that modern humans are thought to have evolved from prior hominids around 50,000 years ago

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