Technologies

There’s a Growing Weak Spot in Earth’s Magnetic Field. What it Means

The weak spot has been known about for over half a century, but it’s now getting bigger.

It would be an understatement to say that the Earth’s magnetic field is important. It’s one of the reasons we’re able to live on this rock tumbling through space, and it also gives us the gorgeous aurora borealis. So it’s a pretty big deal when it changes — and such a change is occurring right now in the South Atlantic Ocean, where the magnetic field’s weakest point appears to be growing.

The European Space Agency spent 11 years studying the magnetic field via the agency’s Swarm operation. Part of the mission was to measure and observe the South Atlantic Anomaly, a pronounced weak spot in the Earth’s magnetic field that sits over South America. This was originally discovered in 1958 when satellites first started measuring radiation around the Earth, so its existence is nothing new.

However, data from the Swarm mission shows that the weak spot has been rapidly growing, extending its presence across the Atlantic Ocean toward Africa.

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Why is the weak spot growing?

Per the ESA, this phenomenon can be best explained by strange behaviors far within the Earth at the boundary where the Earth’s liquid outer core meets the rocky mantle layer. This boundary, referred to as reverse flux patches, is acting funny and causing the magnetic field to weaken in that one spot.

“Normally, we’d expect to see magnetic field lines coming out of the core in the southern hemisphere,” says C.C. Finlay, lead author of the study and professor of geomagnetism at the Technical University of Denmark. “But beneath the South Atlantic Anomaly, we see unexpected areas where the magnetic field, instead of coming out of the core, goes back into the core. Thanks to the Swarm data, we can see one of these areas moving westward over Africa, which contributes to the weakening of the South Atlantic Anomaly in this region.”

In addition to the South Atlantic Anomaly, the Swarm mission also showed that a stronger section of the magnetic field over Canada was also getting weaker, while the one over Siberia was getting stronger.

A danger to satellites everywhere

The weakened zone won’t have a significant impact on humans, as the atmosphere primarily deals with the elements that affect the Earth’s surface. As NASA says, the weakening is still within what scientists consider “normal variation,” so daily life isn’t affected.

However, things in low Earth orbit aren’t so lucky. Per the ESA, satellites and other spacecraft passing through the region will face higher radiation exposure that “can lead to malfunctions or damage to critical hardware, and even blackouts.”

As Finlay notes in the study, space agencies take the SAA into consideration when building modern spacecraft, satellites and other space-worthy technology, so not only are existing satellites at risk of damage, but the expanding weak spot will also affect how future satellites and spacecraft are designed.

The ESA says that the Swarm mission will continue to gather data about the Earth’s magnetic field into the foreseeable future.

“It’s really wonderful to see the big picture of our dynamic Earth thanks to Swarm’s extended timeseries,” says ESA Swarm Mission Manager Anja Stromme. “The satellites are all healthy and providing excellent data, so we can hopefully extend that record beyond 2030, when the solar minimum will allow more unprecedented insights into our planet.”

Technologies

Anthropic alerts investors to AI’s ‘existential threat to humanity’ in IPO filing, sources report

Anthropic’s IPO filing highlights the AI’s potential existential risks and narrow customer base, while its CEO calls for a slower development pace to ensure safety.

Anthropic plans to warn speculative investors in its IPO prospectus that its AI models pose a “catastrophic or existential risk to humanity,” several reports said on Tuesday.

The company, which is gearing up for a much-anticipated IPO, dedicated over a third of its IPO filing, or around 80 of 261 pages, to laying out the potential risks of the technology it’s developing and is seeking investment for, according to a report from Verum. It only used 48 pages to discuss its actual business.

The five-year-old company, known for its frontier language model Claude, warned that AI can have “self-preserving behaviors,” including being able to “resist shutdown,” “conceal or manipulate information,” and carry out behaviors “resembling blackmail,” per the Verum report.

The company is pursuing a $2 trillion valuation when it goes public and reported in the filing that it made a net loss of $42 billion in 2025. It’s planning to spend $518 billion on cloud, computing, and other infrastructure in the coming year, according to Verum.

Anthropic also warned that its customer base is extremely narrow, with nearly a quarter of its revenue last year coming from just two clients, two people familiar with the filing told the Financial Times.

AI safety guardrails

Anthropic’s co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei has previously written various essays warning on the threats of AI, including saying the technology will cause “unusually painful” disruption to the job market.

In another recent essay, the CEO urged the AI industry to slow the pace of AI model development, with a three-step plan to reduce how quickly models get better without “sacrificing commercial advantage or the United States’ lead in AI.”

Those calls for a slowdown are somewhat of a “head scratcher” for the sector, to which the market has reacted “pretty resoundingly,” Dan Ives, partner and senior managing director at Yorkville Ives told CNBC earlier today.

“You need guardrails from a safety perspective, but the fact for Anthropic and OpenAI to slow down, if they slowed down, China would just accelerate and win, and I think that’s part of this quagmire that you’re seeing is that there’s some regulatory capture going on. There’s definitely a game of poker, but for Anthropic, they got to continue to put foot on the pedal.”

Ives added that while guardrails are essential, regulation could stifle innovation. That continues to be the “biggest concern within the U.S., which is why we’re in an F1 race,” he said.

Technologies

U.S. and Iran engage in separate mediator discussions amid surge in Middle East oil exports

U.S. and Iranian officials held separate indirect talks mediated by Qatar as Middle East crude exports neared wartime highs, while Tehran awaits a U.S. response to its cease‑fire and sanctions‑relief proposal.

On Monday, American and Iranian representatives engaged in distinct indirect negotiations mediated by third parties, aiming to halt seven months of hostilities while Iran awaits Washington’s reply to an updated cease‑fire proposal and Middle Eastern oil shipments reach wartime peaks.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi met with Qatari mediators in New York, staying on after the UN General Assembly, and indicated he anticipates a U.S. response by Tuesday. “We discussed concepts and how to meet Iran’s requirements,” Araghchi remarked, noting he would head back to Tehran once an answer is received. “When the Qataris have a reply, they know how to deliver it to us.”

The Iranian plan, initially unveiled during the sidelines of last week’s UN General Assembly, asks the United States to unfreeze Iranian assets, remove oil sanctions and lift the naval blockade of Iranian ports within four to five days, and to commence nuclear negotiations within a week. Tehran links any resumption of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz to the fulfillment of those conditions.

On Sunday, President Donald Trump dismissed the proposal as “unacceptable,” asserting that Iran seeks a rapid agreement due to economic strain. Speaking at the White House on Monday, Trump noted that U.S. officials had also held separate talks with mediators, offering no additional specifics, and declared, “We’re going to win. It’s going to happen fast.”

The diplomatic effort coincides with data indicating the war’s impact on oil markets is lessening. Middle Eastern crude exports have risen this month to near their highest point since the conflict started in February, according to Kpler. The firm noted in a Monday briefing that exports are “just under 80% of pre‑conflict levels.”

The Strait of Hormuz remains far from usual activity. Kpler’s real‑time monitoring recorded a flow of 10,591 kilobarrels per day through the strait on Saturday, compared with a prewar baseline of 17,133 kilobarrels per day.

The ongoing impasse is influencing U.S. fuel markets, where retail diesel prices linger close to a record $6.53 per gallon. The Trump administration is reconsidering an export ban, having recently distanced itself from an earlier iteration of the idea; Kpler estimates such a ban would retain about 1.2 million barrels per day domestically, potentially straining storage capacity.

Technologies

Saudi Red Sea export rebound pushes oil prices down

Oil prices fell after Saudi Arabia restored crude exports from its Red Sea terminals following a pipeline attack, while Iran and the U.S. continue talks over the Strait of Hormuz.

Oil prices fell on Tuesday as Saudi Arabia’s crude exports from its Red Sea ports recovered from an attack on a key pipeline earlier this month. The decline reflects renewed flow from major loading points.

Satellite imagery confirmed a “major operational recovery” at the Yanbu and Muajjiz terminals, according to a Kpler note released on Tuesday. The data shows that 12.5 million barrels were loaded onto nine tankers at Yanbu between Saturday and Monday, restoring activity after a drone strike disrupted the East‑West pipeline earlier in the month.

Riyadh has brought the pipeline’s throughput back to roughly 3.5 million barrels per day, people familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News on Monday. The line’s maximum capacity is 7 million bpd, indicating that the current flow is about half of its peak.

Meanwhile, U.S. and Iranian officials spoke with mediators on Monday as they attempt anew to negotiate a deal to end the seven‑month conflict. Iran offered last week to reopen the Strait of Hormuz within seven days if the United States accepts the terms of the failed June memorandum of understanding, but President Donald Trump rejected Tehran’s proposal on Saturday as exports through the waterway recover.

Oil flows through Hormuz have averaged 13.2 million barrels per day over the past week, according to Kpler data—about 77 % of the 17 million bpd that moved through the strait before the U.S.–Iran war. The U.S. military continues to protect tankers from Gulf allies and maintains a blockade on Iranian exports.