"The discovery of the Earth's 'ambipolar electric field' may have played an important role in our planet's evolution and could help us in the search for remote and potentially hospitable planets beyond our star system."
"Svalbard is the only rocket range in the world where you can fly through the polar wind and make the measurements we needed," said coauthor and University of Leicester space physicist Suzie Imber in a statement.
"Something had to be drawing these particles out of the atmosphere," said lead author Glyn Collinson in a NASA statement, addressing the long-standing mystery surrounding the cold polar wind.
"A half a volt is almost nothing - it's only about as strong as a watch battery. But that's just the right amount to explain the phenomena we observed," Collinson explained.
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