Does Earth Have a Magnetic Field and How Does It Work?

[cragar]

water is fairly paramagnetic

 

[dacruick]

shouldn't magnetic fields be stronger closer to water then?

 

[cragar]

ya , you can push a grape with a bar magnet hanging from a torsion setup.
Isn't the Earth's B field pretty weak . I'm not necessarily saying our oceans are the major contributor to our field , but i just want to discuss it .

 

[FizixFreak]

has the strength of this megnatic field benn calculated?

 

[cragar]

yes , about 30 micro teslas at the surface . about 60 microteslas at the poles

 

[FizixFreak]

i doubt that such weak megnatic field will be prominent (but obviosly it is)
but since it is not uniform are we talking about average value ?
?

 

[dacruick]

Something tells me that it is not the water in the ocean. Wouldn't there be extremely stronger fields over water than there would be over land? wouldn't someone have noticed that by now.

It makes more sense to me that it is something in the Earth's core because that allows for the field to be distributed across the entire Earth more plausibly.

 

[sophiecentaur]

I'd go for the argument which uses the Earth's metallic core to explain the majority of the B field. After all, there is such a small mass of surface water compared with the vast volume available in the region of the core.

 

[FizixFreak]

yeah the oceans do not seem to present an satisfying explanation

 

[dacruick]

its a nice idea though. I would like them to be right. I wonder what kind of energy you could create by cycling salt saturated water in a whirlpool and running current through it. I speculate it would be an overall loss in energy, but who knows.