Earth’s Magnetic Field Stuns Researchers: Equator’s Polarity Flips as South Atlantic Weak Spot Expands
New satellite data overturns a decades‑old assumption about the magnetosphere’s electric polarity, while ESA’s Swarm mission maps a fast‑changing weak region over the South Atlantic that matters for satellites—not people. Published: November 12, 2025 The big picture Two complementary breakthroughs are reshaping scientists’ view of near‑Earth space: A surprising flip near Earth’s equator For decades, textbooks described a dawn‑to‑dusk electric field threading the magnetosphere, with the “morning side” positively charged and the “evening side” negative. A team from Kyoto, Nagoya and Kyushu Universities has now shown the opposite near the equator: morning is negative, evening is positive (the poles still