About 41,000 years ago, Earth’s magnetic field briefly changed during an event known as Lachamp. During this time, the Earth’s magnetic field weakened significantly, weakening to a minimum of 5% of its current strength, allowing more cosmic rays to reach the Earth’s atmosphere.

Scientists from the Technical University of Denmark and the German Earth Sciences Research Center used data from the ESA Swarm mission together with other sources to create an audio visualization of the Laschamp event. They mapped the movement of Earth’s magnetic field lines during the event and created the stereo version you can hear in the video.

The soundscape was created using recordings of natural sounds such as creaking trees and falling rocks, mixing them with familiar, strange, almost alien sounds. The process of transforming sounds using data is similar to creating music from a note.

Data from ESA’s Swarm constellation is being used to better understand how the Earth’s magnetic field is generated. Satellites measure magnetic signals not only from the core but also from the mantle, crust, oceans to the ionosphere and magnetosphere. These data are crucial for studying phenomena such as geomagnetic reversals and Earth’s internal dynamics.

Earth’s Magnetic Field Sound, the first version of magnetic field sound created using Swarm data, was initially played through a 32-speaker system set up in a square in Copenhagen; each speaker represented magnetic field changes at different locations. worldwide for the last 100,000 years.