NASA makes discovery about Earth that's been deemed 'as important as gravity'

A discovery about the Earth could be as important as gravity in how the planet works.

There are innumerable factors which are crucial in how the scientific balance of the planet is sustained.

Gravity is, unsurprisingly, a rather big factor when it comes to how the world works, not least keeping us, the oceans, and the atmosphere from floating off into space.

But it seems that gravity is not the only force which is an important part of the Earth as there's another force which has a profound impact.

A team of scientists from NASA carried out experiments into the force in August, and were able to get a much clearer picture of its effect and importance.

And given how important gravity is, well, it must be pretty damn important to match that.

So what is this strange new force that NASA scientists have discovered?

An image taken above the north pole during the study (NASA)

It's a form of electrical field and is focussed around the Earth's poles.

NASA has had inklings of the field for decades, with spacecraft detecting a stream of particles flowing into space as they flew over the North and South poles.

These streams have been detected as far back as the 1960s, and were christened the 'polar wind'.

It is to be expected that there would be some particles flowing out of the atmosphere, but the polar wind was surprising.

A team of scientists began investigating the polar wind, culminating with them launching a rocket from Svalbard, an island close to the North Pole.

Glyn Collinson is a lead author on the study and a principal investigator at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre.

Collinson said that a planet with an atmosphere has an 'ambipolar field'.

She said: "Now that we've finally measured it, we can begin learning how it's shaped our planet as well as others over time."

NASA found an electrical field (Roberto Machado Noa / Getty)

The particles appeared to be cooler, and didn't have signs that they'd ever been heated up.

But despite this they were travelling at a supersonic speed.

Collinson added: "Something had to be drawing these particles out of the atmosphere."

When they launched the Endurance rocket from Svalbard finding a very small charge of just 0.55 volts.

Nonetheless the charge was enough to push hydrogen ions, that's an atom or group of atoms with an electrical charge, in the solar wind.

Endurance project scientist at NASA Goddard and co-author of the study Alex Glocer said: "That's more than enough to counter gravity — in fact, it's enough to launch [atmospheric particles] upwards into space at supersonic speeds."

Meanwhile, Collinson added: "It's like this conveyor belt, lifting the atmosphere up into space."