Jackson Lab

Research focus

ERC Advanced Grant · 2018

Unravelling Earth’s magnetic history and processes

We wish to understand how magnetic fields are generated in the cores of planets. This process is called the dynamo mechanism, whose understanding remains one of the geophysical grand challenges. In cores of rocky planets and in gas giants, thermal forcing results in convection and the resulting flow of liquid metal transports heat and generates magnetic fields as a result of the electrical currents that are induced by their motion. Magnetic field generation affects heat transport and cooling, controlling planetary history and evolution (on Earth it is connected with the growth of the inner core); and ultimately the presence or not of magnetic fields can control the existence of life. To…

From the public funding record at EU CORDIS. Describes the funded project, not the reviews below.