In this round of funding from the Research Council of Norway’s FRIPRO scheme, a researcher at the Department of Geosciences was successful in securing funding for his application. FRIPRO grants are highly competitive and are awarded to researchers who excel in their fields, and to projects of high scientific quality.
Leandro Gallo, who is an researcher in geophysics and works at the research centre PHAB at UiO, will receive a total of NOK 9.9 million for his project, entitled Long-term Evolution of the Time-Averaged Geomagnetic Field: Beyond the Geocentric Axial Dipole, or POLESTAR for short.
The project will investigate how Earth’s magnetic field has evolved throughout geological time, and what this can tell us about Earth’s habitability—that is, the conditions necessary for life.
Evolution of Earth’s Magnetic Field Through Geological Time
Earth has had a global magnetic field for billions of years. The field is generated by movements of liquid iron in the planet’s core and extends far into space. It deflects much of the solar wind and energetic particles that could otherwise affect and damage life on Earth as well as technological infrastructure.
"Today's magnetic field has been mapped in great detail, but we know much less about what it looked like further back in geological time. The field changes on many timescales, in its strength, its shape and the position of its poles. POLESTAR focuses on the slowest of these changes: how the overall shape of the field has evolved over hundreds of millions of years," says Gallo about the project.
An important source of evidence for Gallo and his research team is found in magnetic minerals in lava and sedimentary rocks, which will be studied at the Ivar Giæver Geomagnetic Laboratory at UiO. As lava cools or sediments are deposited, these minerals can preserve information about the direction of the magnetic field. These records are used to reconstruct both past magnetic fields and the positions of continents.
Tracking the magnetic field's shape over 320 million years
With POLESTAR, Gallo hopes to produce the first continuous overview of the shape of Earth’s magnetic field over the past 320 million years.
The project will combine thousands of magnetic measurements from rocks around the world with new statistical methods. For periods with fewer available data, the researchers will use machine-learning models trained on better-documented time periods.
“This research project may provide new knowledge about how Earth’s magnetic protection has changed over time, as well as about processes deep inside the planet. It may also lead to better reconstructions of past continental positions, which are important for studies of ancient climate and the evolution of life. Equally important is clarifying the role magnetic fields play in a planet’s habitability—both on Earth and on planets beyond our own Solar System,” Gallo concludes.
Sources:
23 prosjekter får millionstøtte: — Banebrytende kunnskapes artikler, Khrono 21.09.2026
269 millioner kroner til toppforskning på blant annet matematikk- og leseferdigheter, Forskningrådet, pressemelding, 21.09.2026