Throughout history, the Moon has both captivated the human mind as well as had important practical consequences on the lives of people in coastal areas. Humans have attributed the Full Moon to all types of things, many of which do not stand up to scientific scrutiny.
The Moon also has a wake structure with a strong electrostatic potential which may act as a perturbation for the magnetic field lines. In a recent article published in Geophysical Research Letters, a group of scientists led by Dr. Katariina Nykyri used ARTEMIS spacecraft observations close to Moon in the Earth’s magnetotail.
They found surprisingly that the Moon may weakly perturb the Earth's magnetosphere when it travels through the magnetotail in about 4–5 days around the time of the Full Moon. This effect may have been stronger in the past, when Moon was closer to the Earth and its magnetic field was stronger.
Evolutionary Significance
These findings hint that in addition to the tidal effects produced by the full Moon, the Moon also may drive an electro-magnetic perturbation in the vicinity of the Full Moon which propagates along the stretched Earth’s magnetic field lines.
Considering a closer proximity of the Moon to the Earth in the past and its stronger field, this mechanism has likely been stronger and could have possibly played a stronger role influencing evolution of animal-magnetism. For example, some species, like birds and whales have learned during their evolutionary history to orient themselves and migrate to different regions based on the magnetic field.
View the full research article: 10.1029/2024GL110129