Washington DC, United States

It has been always known that there are gravity and magnetic fields present on planet Earth. 

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However, an international team of scientists, with the help of a NASA suborbital rocket, was able to measure a planet-wide electric field successfully, which has been found to be as fundamental to planet Earth as are magnetic and gravity fields. 

The ambipolar electric field was first hypothesized more than 60 years ago by scientists based on how the atmosphere of our planet can escape above the North and South Poles of the Earth.

Also Read: Earth rotated 'dramatically slowly' when life exploded and vanished on planet: Study

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NASA's Endurance mission rocket's measurements have now confirmed that the ambipolar field exists and its strength was also quantified, which revealed the field's role in pushing atmospheric escape and giving shape to the ionosphere, which is a layer of the upper atmosphere.

Earth's electric field pushes particles out of atmosphere: Study

Scientists have tried to understand the evolution and complex movements of the atmosphere of our planet because it gives clues regarding the history of Earth and also gives insight into the mysteries of different planets and helps them understand which of them has the potential of becoming hospitable to life.

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The experts have already published a research paper on this topic in the journal Nature.

The spacecraft, which has been flying over the poles of Earth since the late 1960s, detected a stream of particles that was spotted flowing from our atmosphere into space. 

The outflow was predicted by the theorists, which they called the "polar wind" as the researchers tried to understand its causes.

In this polar wind, a lot of particles were cold and had no signs of getting heated but were still travelling at supersonic speeds.

Watch: Earth slows down by 1.33 milliseconds

"Something had to be drawing these particles out of the atmosphere," said Glyn Collinson, who is the lead author of the paper and principal investigator of Endurance at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

The scientists suspected that a yet-to-be-discovered electric field may have caused this polar wind.

The hypothesized electric field, which was generated at the subatomic scale, was predicted to be very weak since effects were felt only across hundreds of miles. 

In 2016, Collinson and his team invented a new instrument, which was then used to measure the ambipolar field of Earth.

"Any planet with an atmosphere should have an ambipolar field. Now that we've finally measured it, we can begin learning how it's shaped our planet as well as others over time," Collinson said.

(With inputs from agencies)