Magnetics From Space

Everybody knows about magnets. We all have them on our refrigerators and people even do groovy things like this trick with them:

But the earth also has a magnetic field. The earth needs this magnetic field as it protects us from solar winds blasting us with energized particles that could strip our ozone away. it's made by the sloshing around of the earth's inner core. Some scientists wanted to quantify and measure magnetic fields by satellites because the magnetic fields change and vary even more over Africa and the South Atlantic Ocean. They use the data from the satellite to better understand how the field varies over time and in turn can help us to understand the goings-on in the earth under the surface. The super technical article with the data and results can be found here.

~Nate