A major dip in the Earth’s magnetic field over the South Atlantic has been puzzling scientists for over a century.

Perhaps most strangely, the weak spot — dubbed the South Atlantic Anomaly — has grown rapidly over the last eleven years. That’s according to satellite data suggests showing it’s expanded by an area equivalent to half the size of continental Europe, as detailed in a new paper published in the journal Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors.

An international team of researchers analyzed data collected by the European Space Agency’s Swarm, a constellation comprised of three identical satellites that measure the Earth’s magnetic signals.

The findings could allow us to improve existing magnetic models that play a crucial role in navigation and tracking of space weather, wh

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