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Recently I read on Spaceweather.com

https://spaceweatherarchive.com/2024/02/

a surprising paper according to which the space debris or vaporized material (mostly metals) that has been deposited in near-Earth space for decades, which is produced when satellite or rocket parts burn up on re-entry into the atmosphere, could cause a weakening of the Earth's magnetic field.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.09329

“It’s a textbook undergraduate physics problem,” she [Solter] explains. “Suppose you put a conductive shell (satellite debris) around a spherical magnet (Earth). Outside the shell, the magnetic field goes to zero due to shielding effects. This is a highly simplified comparison, of course, but we might actually be doing this to our planet.”

Here is my comprehension problem: A conductive sheet, for example a metal shell around a magnet, does not influence the magnetic field at all (at least in the static case).

Or, what is possibly meant here? Could someone please tell me something about this?

Cisfinite
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  • I think we would need to launch several orders of magnitude more junk before this becomes an actual problem. The magnetic moment of Earth's magnetic field is absolutely huge (e.g., see https://physics.stackexchange.com/a/728439/59023). As for your reaction, if the magnetic permeability of the metal shell is high, it can act like a shield to magnetic fields (e.g., look up mu metal cans). – honeste_vivere Feb 29 '24 at 13:49
  • Thank you. The problem described consists of the interaction between the Earth's magnetic field and the additional plasma generated in the ionosphere. This additional plasma is created by the vaporization of satellite debris. – Cisfinite Mar 03 '24 at 08:19
  • That would be even less consequential. You can do a simple handwavy estimate of the total mass of ionized particles in the Earth's ionosphere and find it orders of magnitude larger than the total mass of all things humans have launched into space. In fact, it may even be that more mass leaks out per day through the cusp than the total mass of space debris currently up there... – honeste_vivere Mar 04 '24 at 14:19

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