Dennis Whyte

So the study of aurora borealis, what's happening in the near atmosphere, what happens when solar flares hit the magnetic field.

In fact...

Remember I said fusion is the reason that life is responsible in the universe?

Well, you could also argue so is magnetic confinement because the charged particles which are being emitted from the galaxy and from our own star would be very, very damaging on Earth.

So, we get two layers of protection.

One is the atmosphere itself, but the other one is the magnetic field which surrounds the Earth and basically traps these charged particles so they can't get away.

It's the same deal.

Giant magnet, yeah.

So it's basically true.

There's essentially two ways to create a magnet.

So one of them is that we're familiar with, like fridge magnets and so forth.

These are so-called permanent magnets.

And what it means is that within these, the atoms are arranged in a particular way that it produces, the electrons basically are arranged in a particular way that it produces a permanent magnetic field that is set by the material.

So those have a fundamental limitation how strong they can be, and they also tend to have this circular shape like this.

So we don't typically use those.

So what we use are so-called electromagnets.

And what is this?

It's like, so the other way to make a magnetic field, also go back to your elementary school physics or science class, is that you take a nail and you wrap a copper wire around it and connect it to a battery, then it can pick up iron filings.

This is an electromagnet.

At its simplest, what it is, it's an electric current which is going in a pattern around and around and around.