FLIPPING MAGNETIC ATTRACTION: DMR NETWORK, 00:00hrs THURSDAY

Graphic depicting the Earth's magnetosphere and the profound effect it has on protecting the biosphere from the Sun's charged particles.

byANDY FLEMING

It's another one of our planet's amazing attributes that makes life possible here.

It's called the magnetosphere and it is generated by the Earth's spinning molten core.

It is a gigantic magnetic field extending tens of thousands of miles in to space and it diverts solar radiation and atomic particles such as protons towards the planet's poles, in the process creating stunning auroral displays. 

More importantly the magnetosphere is responsible for protecting all life on the Earth from deadly solar radiation. It also prevents our planet from ending up like Mars, a dry, dessicated world that once was oceanic and wet, but whose molten core froze leading to the loss of its magnetosphere that in turn allowed the solar wind to destroy the Red Planet's atmosphere.

RELATIVELY SPEAKING, THE TIME FOR RELATIVITY IS 01:00hrs UTC THURSDAY!

Nobel Prize winner Albert Einstein displaying his relativistic tongue later in life!

E=mc². It's the name of the world’s most famous equation.

Everyone’s heard of it, and yet virtually no one has the faintest clue what it's about, or of its paramount importance to our civilisation, and come to think of it our existence at all.

I’m either very foolish or brave, but at 01:00hrs UTC/GMT on Thursday March 20 (tomorrow)/ 8.00pm Eastern, I’m going to endeavour to give a 101 crash course on Einstein’s (1905) scientific paper entitled On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies, more popularly known as his Theory of Special Relativity. It was derived from the equations of electromagnetism developed by James Clerk Maxwell in the nineteenth century.

On a positive note, Special Relativity is magnitudes easier than Einstein’s theory of gravity, or General Relativity!

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In the forthcoming programme I try to condense the essence of relativistic speeds as required for interstellar space travel down to just five minutes! And all in plain English lay person’s terms too, without the need for time dilation or Lorentz length contractions!

To learn how it may be possible to travel to the stars in no time at all using mass converted to pure energy with perhaps warp drives thrown in too listen to the next Podcast-UFO to be broadcast on ArtBell’s Dark Matter Radio Network at 01:00hrs UTC/GMT on Thursday March 20. Click the links or logo to listen! Wish me luck!

FEEL THE PB&J (PASSION, BEAUTY, AND JOY) OF THE COSMOS? SHARE IT!