(NewsNation) — It may sound like the plot of a science fiction movie, but it’s all too real: NASA is observing an anomaly in Earth’s magnetic field. A giant region of lower magnetic intensity in the skies above the planet is stretching out between South America and southwest Africa.
ScienceAlert.com reports that while the “dent” in the planet’s magnetic field doesn’t imperil life on the surface, it could result in damage to the space agency’s satellites and spacecraft, which may be exposed to a high level of charged particles from the sun while passing through the area.
This vast, developing phenomenon, called the South Atlantic Anomaly, has been known for years, but it now appears to be growing and possibly splitting in two.
“Even though the SAA is slow-moving, it is going through some change in morphology, so it’s also important that we keep observing it by having continued missions,” geophysicist Terry Sabaka from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre in Greenbelt, Maryland, told the outlet.