PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to: http://to.pbs.org/DonateSPACE ↓ More info below ↓ Please Take the PBS Digital Studios Annual Survey Here: https://www.pbsresearch.org/c/r/ST_YTvideo It's very helpful and you could win a free T-Shirt! Support Space Time on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/pbsspacetime Check out the new Space Time Merch Store! https://pbsspacetime.com/ Earth’s magnetic field protects us from deadly space radiation. What if it were drastically weakened, as a precursor to flipping upside down? I mean, it has before … many, many times.. Hosted by Matt O'Dowd Written by Matt O'Dowd Graphics by Leonardo Scholzer Directed by: Andrew Kornhaber Produced By: Kornhaber Brown Special Thanks to Lathrop Lab at University of Maryland: https://complex.umd.edu/ Check Out Lathrop Lab's YouTube Channel to learn more about their 3-meter experiment that models the Earth's core: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-nUrQmFR3pFgEVwW0qAURA Spaceship Earth has a literal deflector shield. A geomagnetic field. Lines of magnetic force, forged by currents in the planet’s molten core, erupt from the surface close to the north south geographic poles, connecting to each other to wreath the planet in a dipole field, like a gigantic bar magnet. Magnetic fields exert a force on moving charged particles, causing them to spiral around those force lines. That’s helpful, because Earth is constantly bombarded by very fast moving charged particles, especially coming from the Sun. Our magnetic field deflects the worst of these. Not all planets are so lucky. Mars, with its solid core, has no such shield – and so the red planet’s atmosphere was stripped away by the solar wind billions of years ago. Want Even More Great Space Content? Check out the Exciting Summer of Space Playlist    • Playlist   Big Bang Supporters: Alexander Tamas Anton Lifshits David Nicklas Fabrice Eap Juan Benet Morgan Hough Quasar Supporters: Mark Heising Mark Rosenthal Vinnie Falco Hypernova Supporters: Chuck Zegar Danton Spivey Donal Botkin Edmund Fokschaner Hank S John Hofmann John R. Slavik Jordan Young Joseph Salomone Matthew Matthew O'Connor Syed Ansar Gamma Ray Burst Supporters: Adrien Hatch Adrian Molyneux Alexey Eromenko Andreas Nautsch Bradley Jenkins Brandon Labonte Carlo Mogavero Dan Warren Daniel Lyons David Behtala DFaulk Dustan Jones Geoffrey Short James Flowers James Quintero John Funai John Pollock Jonah Jonathan Nesfeder Joseph Dillman Josh Thomas Kevin Lee Kevin Warne Kyle Hofer Malte Ubl Mark Vasile Nathan Hitchings Nicholas Nachefski Nick Virtue Paul Rose Scott Gossett Sigurd Ruud Frivik Taras Vozniuk Tim Jones Tim Stephani Yurii Konovaliuk سلطان الخليفي