The tendency of a magnet to align itself in a north-south direction, so giving a magnetic compass, was discovered by the Chinese about 2000 years ago. Then in 1600 William Gilbert published De Magnete, in which he concluded that the earth behaved as a giant magnet. ...
Answer: Larmor suggested in 1919 that a self-exciting dynamo could explain the magnetic field of the earth, as well as that of the sun and other stars, but it was Elsasser and Bullard in the 1940s who showed how motion in the liquid core of the earth might produce a self-sustaining magnetic field. By this time seismology and other studies had given a clearer picture of the earth, as having a solid inner core, a liquid outer core, both with a composition more of metal (mainly iron) than rock, and a rocky mantle, all below a thin crust that is all we can directly see. Energy from radioactivity travels outwards as heat, producing thermal convection in the core. It seems that this convection is the cause of the earth's magnetic field, although our knowledge of the core and its dynamics is sketchy. Our knowledge is limited to saying that flow regimes like those that may be occurring in the core can produce self-sustaining dynamos, with characteristics similar to that needed to produce the earth’s magnetic field.
<h3>You can see that dull surfaces are good absorbers and emitters of infrared radiation. Shiny surfaces are poor absorbers and emitters (but they are good reflectors of infrared radiation</h3>
