Being bored in my geology class, I left to get an 8-shot coffee and chased it with 16 oz of caffeinated tea. From that, I was tweaking pretty hard. While I was tweaking, I ended up developing an astrophysics problem that I had. This is the sort of thing that happens when I have too much caffeine:
Due to the first law of thermodynamics, energy cannot be created or destroyed. When the earth converts solar radiation into heat, we begin storing up energy. That energy dissipates about as fast as it is captured. Since heat energy cannot be transmitted into the vacuum of space, this would require one of four things:
A. That the first law of thermodynamics is wrong and that energy can decay into nothingness.
B. That the energy is converted into a useless dark energy that we have not yet observed (which is fascinating and would provide a compliment to dark matter, but is ultimately not useful. This was my first theory).
C. Energy is converted back from heat to radiation.
D. The earth is converting energy into matter and is constantly growing.
Going off option C, I propose this model:
When the sun radiates energy into our upper atmosphere, the molecules vibrate. This vibration produces static electricity. If this creates a circuit on a large enough scale (the earth), this could cause an electromagnetic field.
Some reports I read from Slashdot suggest that many scientists doubt the gooey spinning iron core we allegedly have (and have almost no evidence for). If we strike this weak theory, we can assume that the iron in the center of the earth is static and unmoving, creating an electromagnetic conductor/capacitor, acting as an antenna that aims the magnetic field in our magnetosphere. This would mean that the sun not only creates, but also controls the power of our magnetosphere. It would also mean that recent earthquakes may have caused our poles to move more rapidly as of late.
So in a nutshell, I have rejected the theory of a spinning iron core, proposed a new source of power for our magnetosphere, and solved the issue of where our absorbed solar energy goes. I would love to have this reviewed and either struck down or confirmed by a real astrophysicist. I’m certainly no scientist, so I can’t run any credible models on my own. Any thoughts or obvious holes? I’d love an e-mail or post in the comments.