Magnetic field
Earth's global field is approximated as a tilted dipole generated by liquid outer-core dynamo action. The rendered lines emphasize geometry and solar-wind distortion, not magnetometer inversion products.
Earth fields lab
Magnetic and electric fields around Earth in a 3D study view.
Interactive 3D model of Earth with a textbook-style dipole view: dayside solar-wind compression, nightside magnetotail stretching, magnetic-versus-geographic axis cues, auroral belts, and a simplified electric-circuit layer.
Field geometry key
How this scene is organized
North magnetic pole
South magnetic pole
Auroral oval
Electric circuit layer
Theory
How to read the field model
Electric field
The electric component is shown as a simplified global electric circuit: ionosphere-to-ground potential, return current paths, and storm-time strengthening. It is a conceptual layer, not a full plasma solver.
Influence
These fields shape aurora, radiation-belt access, charged-particle motion, satellite charging environment, and long-conductor induced currents.
Operational caution
Real magnetospheric forecasting depends on solar-wind measurements, IMF orientation, plasma models, and time-dependent coupling that are not solved on this page.
Mathematical model
Field and potential model
Gravity, magnetic, and electric field scenes are generated from vector-field equations. The vectors and surfaces are sampled from formulas, not sketched.
Newtonian gravity
\[\mathbf{g}(\mathbf{r})=-\frac{GM\,\mathbf{r}}{\lvert \mathbf{r}\rvert^3}\]
The gravity vector points toward the mass and falls as inverse square. Field arrows are samples of this equation.
Potential relation
\[\mathbf{g}=-\nabla \Phi\]
The force field is the negative gradient of the potential surface. This verifies that vector direction and potential shape agree.
Dipole field
\[\mathbf{B}(\mathbf{r}) \propto \left[\frac{3\mathbf{r}(\mathbf{m}\cdot\mathbf{r})}{\lvert \mathbf{r}\rvert^5}-\frac{\mathbf{m}}{\lvert \mathbf{r}\rvert^3}\right]\]
Earth-field lines use a dipole approximation. The visualization is a sampled theoretical field with stated simplifications.
Verification standard: the rendered object must be reproducible from stated equations, catalog parameters, or explicit geometric transforms. Visual reference images may inform presentation only; they are not the source of orbital positions, field vectors, accretion-disk gradients, timing, or engineering layout.
Limitations: browser scenes may use bounded scale, compressed distances, simplified two-body dynamics, schematic transfer curves, or educational approximations where full numerical ephemerides, CFD, finite-element models, or general-relativistic ray tracing are outside the page scope. Those simplifications are part of the model contract, not hidden image-based construction.