Snowball Earth was Cold and Scary and the Milky Way Magnetic Field is a Mess
About this episode
This episode discusses the frozen state of Earth during Snowball Earth and explores the complexities of the Milky Way's magnetic field.
The Earth spent some crazy amounts of time (tens of millions of years) completely frozen over. And not, in the grand scheme of things, all that long ago. New research shows the ocean was salty and super-cold. How did life survive? New techniques using radio observations reveal a complicated and twisty galactic magnetic field. Join us for an icy, winter olympics themed episode to find out all this and more.
People in this episode
Hosts: Joshua Colwell, Adrienne Dove, James Cooney
Topics covered
- Snowball Earth
- galactic magnetic field
- life survival
- ocean conditions
- climate history
Keywords
- Snowball Earth
- galactic magnetic field
- life survival
- ocean salinity
- climate change
Mentioned in this episode
Places: Earth, Milky Way
More episodes of Walkabout the Galaxy
- Distant Quasars and Earth's Quasi-Moon
- I See a Big Moon Rising and a Bright Radio Sky
- Europa's Disappearing Plumes
- Second Generation Black Hole Mergers and Solar System Chaos
- Whacky Black Hole Collisions and Strange Uranian Rings
- Little Plutino Has An Atmosphere and Making Sense of Saturn
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