Earth's magnetic field Swarm satellite mission.

Combining the satellite data with evidence of Laschamps event and represented it using natural noises like the creaking of wood and the crashing of colliding rocks.

The result – unveiled in 2024 by the Technical University of Denmark and the German Research Center for Geosciences – is is an eerie, otherworldly audio track unlike anything you've heard before.

tens to hundreds of thousands of kilometers into space, protecting us all by deflecting atmosphere-stripping solar particles.

Related: Sound of Earth's Flipping Magnetic Field Haunts Again From 780,000 Years Ago

As the iron and nickel officially changed, as it continues its shift away from Canada and towards Siberia.

In its current orientation, the magnetic field lines form closed loops that are directed south to north above the planet's surface, and then north to south deep within it.

Yet every so often the field randomly flips its polarity. Were this to happen again today, our north-pointing compasses would point to the South Pole.

ESA)

The last such cataclysmic event occurred about 41,000 years ago, leaving a signature in the Laschamps lava flows in France. As the field weakened to only 5 percent of its current strength the reversal process allowed a surpluss of cosmic rays to pass into Earth's atmosphere.

Ice and marine sediment preserve isotopic signatures of this higher-than-normal solar bombardment, with levels of beryllium-10 isotopes doubling during the Laschamps event, according to a study published last year.

These altered atoms are formed when cosmic rays react with our atmosphere, ionizing the air and frying the

Convection currents of liquid metal in the outer core, driven by heat from the inner core, produce circulating electric currents which generate Earth's magnetic field. (explained at the time.

It took 250 years for the Laschamps reversal to take place and it stayed in the unusual orientation for about 440 years. At most, Earth's magnetic field may have remained at 25 percent of its current strength as the north polarity drifted to the south.

but recent research suggests these anomalies are not necessarily connected to flipping events.

Related: Vast Anomaly in Earth's Gravity Field Signals Shifts Deep Beneath The Surface

The South Atlantic anomaly is, however, exposing satellites in the area to higher levels of radiation.

Since 2013, ESA's Swarm constellation has been measuring magnetic signals from Earth's core, mantle, crust, oceans, ionosphere, and magnetosphere so we can better understand our planet's geomagnetic field and predict its fluctuations.

An earlier version of this article was published in October 2024.