Wandering magnetic fields would have had noticeable effects for humans. Maximilian Schanner (GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences, Potsdam, Germany)Our first meeting was a bit awkward. One of us is an archaeologist who studies how past peoples interacted with their environments. Two of us are geophysicists who investigate interactions between solar activity and Earth’s magnetic field.
When we first got together, we wondered whether our unconventional project, linking space weather and human behavior, could actually bridge such a vast disciplinary divide. Now, two years on, we believe the payoffs – personal, professional and scientific – were well worth the initial discomfort.
Our collaboration, which culminated in a recent paper in the journal Science Advances, began with a single question: What happened to life on Earth when the planet’s magnetic field nearly collapsed roughly 41,000 years ago?
Weirdness when Earth’s magnetic shield falters
This near-collapse is known as the Laschamps Excursion, a brief but extreme geomagnetic
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