If you heat up a magnet it stops being a magnet. So why is the molten metal in the earths core a magnet if it’s so hot?Also if you had a pure iron asteroid that was going to miss the earth but go really close nearby would the magnetic field have any pull on it not caused by gravity?
In: Planetary Science
Earth’s magnetic field comes from the flow of electricity. It is not a permanent magnet, like you’re used to, but an electromagnet.
This magnetic field theoretically reaches off forever into space, but being a dipole, its strength drops off with the cube of distance, so very fast. At relatively short distances (on an interplanetary scale) the field drops to nearly zero. Even on Earth’s surface its magnetic field is not strong enough to noticeably increase the weight of an iron bar, so its influence on space projectiles is essentially zero.
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