What if Earth was exposed to a huge magnetic field?

Join the discussion
Registration is free. Start your own thread to ask a follow-up.
6 replies · 2K views
arusse02
Messages
24
Reaction score
0
What would happen if the entire Earth was somehow exposed to a massive magnetic field, such as those found near magnetars, like 10^10 teslas, for about 1 second? Would everyone instantly die? What would be the impact of a moving magnetic field vs a stationary magnetic field be? How much time could we be exposed to that kind of field without dying?
 
Physics news on Phys.org
According to wikipedia, the effects of a magnetic field of that strength would be lethal. See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetar#Magnetic_field

arusse02 said:
Would everyone instantly die? What would be the impact of a moving magnetic field vs a stationary magnetic field be? How much time could we be exposed to that kind of field without dying?

It's probably a safe bet to say that everyone would be dead in under a second.
 
Course disruption to Earth's spin over putting us back in ice age and most probably killing us
 
You can levitate a frog with just 16 Tesla.
 
It would become much harder to open the door of your refrigerator.:oops:
 
If you go from zero to ginormous to zero in a second, I'd be worried about the induced electric fields. Zap!
 
benhall96 said:
Course disruption to Earth's spin over putting us back in ice age and most probably killing us
As has already been pointed out, that's irrelevant because we would be dead LONG before that happened.