Thunder and lightning strikes that create electromagnetic waves dubbed 'Earth's heartbeat' are being monitored by a sensor inside a box in a rural Aberdeenshire field.
The University of Aberdeen device is only one of two in the UK that measure Schumann Resonance - extremely low frequency waves that can be used to study our weather and – some believe – possibly predict earthquakes and may even be linked to our health, sleep and emotions.
Flashes of lightning strike the Earth around 50 times every second sending out tiny waves of energy that bounce back and forth between the ground and the sky in the space known as Earth’s ionosphere – this is called Schumann’s Resonance.
These electromagnetic waves make a steady hum as they circle around the Earth at very low frequencies that humans cannot hear. Some refer to this natural rhythmic pattern of electromagnetic waves as Earth’s heartbeat.
Studying Schumann Resonance helps scientists to monitor climate change and weather patterns on Earth and also what impact solar storms have on the planet.
Research has also been carried out into examining whether Schumann Resonance fluctuates in relation to major seismic events such as earthquakes.
There are even hypotheses that suggest Schumann Resonance could affect human brain activity and potentially impact mood and sleep patterns. This theory, some say, is supported by the fact that the primary frequency of Schumann resonance, which is in the order of 7.83Hz, with its harmonics extending to higher frequences, overlaps with the human brain’s alpha wave range of 8-13Hz.
The University of Aberdeen team have placed a Schumann Resonance detector in a field in Aberdeenshire near Stonehaven in order to study the frequency.
The electromagnetic frequency detector has to be far away from the interference you would get in built up areas such as electricity cables, phone and broadband signals, as these can interfere with their readings.
The detector is tuned to pick up waves in the range of 0-30Hz and while not particularly elaborate to the eye, housed as it is in a plastic box, they actually consist of miles of cable would inside which are required to detect such low frequencies.
Whenever there is a small electromagnetic field, such as a lightning strike, it induces a very small amount of voltage into the wires. A very high-resolution detector records these electromagnetic frequencies onto an onboard computer and the Aberdeen team retrieve the data periodically.
Dr Thasshwin Mathanlal, from the University of Aberdeen’s Planetary Sciences department said: “Something we are really interested to study is weather events and also because we have the only other one of these instruments in the UK in Eskdalemuir in the Scottish borders, so we want to see how the data from each detector correlates.
“In addition to Schumann Resonance, we are interested in studying something called Alfvén waves which happen whenever there is a solar storm. Solar storms happen when there is a burst of energy and particles from the sun that reach Earth. Since in Aberdeenshire we are at a higher latitude, it is also interesting to study these waves too.”
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