Magnetic Field Mystery Solved?

OneOver137 writes "Researchers at Harvard may have solved a long-standing mystery: Why are the magnetic fields of the outer gas giants, Uranus and Neptune so unique? Further more, could these fields be used to probe the internal structure of other planets like Mercury, a notoriously difficult subject? Maybe this new technique could be used on the Messenger mission?"

Comments

Re:Journey to the center of Uranus

[Atzanteol]

Actually, it could make a really crappy movie too.

Re:Journey to the center of Uranus

[Mizery De Aria]

hrmm, What kind of critters are in Uranus?

Is there enough sample points?

[Eevee]

The short blurb on PhysicsWeb said the measurements were all made by Voyager 2. A single pass is, while better than nothing, a rather limited snapsnot of a dynamic system.

Sounds like we need a Voyager 3 and 4 the next time there's a decent slingshot out to them. (Which isn't any time soon.)

Re:Is there enough sample points?

[tjmsquared]

The NASA trend lately has been to send probes to study just one planet rather than do the solar system tour that we did with Voyager. Since we've already sent such missions to Jupiter and Saturn, maybe Uranus and Neptune are next.

Re:Is there enough sample points?

[snake_dad]

Jupiter is next, AFAIK. Don't know of any missions being planned to Neptune or Uranus.

Re:Is there enough sample points?

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as we don't have a Voyager 6, all will be fine.

Re:Is there enough sample points?

[wdconinc]

Not immediately, first to the Moon and Mars :-) We'll see if we have some money/credibility left after that...

Re:Is there enough sample points?

[Eevee]

I would say that NASA (and everybody else) has always had a single planet focus. Doing a quick scan of the Planetary Exploration Timeline at NASA shows two other probes with two planets visited: Pioneer 11 and Mariner 10; a planet and sun combo: Ulysses; and then a sprinkling seven or eight planet and comet or comet and comet probes. All the rest (around 200?) are single target missions. (It's early, my counts may be off.)

The thing about the Voyager missions is there was a window in 1977 where the gas giants would line up for the Grand Tour--where we could use the gravity assist from one planet to get to the next in a reasonable amount of time. Now, this only happens every 175 years, so I doubt I'll be around to see the next Grand Tour mission. So

However, like most grand tours, the Voyager missions did suffer from the "If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium" syndrome of taking some pictures and quickly moving on to the next destination. Most of the probes nowadays are more like picking a beach and spending your entire summer vacation there, so you have enough time to become familiar with the locale. (Or, to use the correct terminology, a flyby mission versus an orbiter mission.)

Further field splits with cooling?

[G4from128k]

If these two outer gas giants cool further, I wonder if the convecting fluid layer will become thinner and thinner as the core freezes? If so, the magnetic field should split into more and more domains. Ultimately, the remaining thin layer will form a dense pattern of Rayleigh-Benard convection cells.

Those small domains will be hard to detect, though. As planet moves to equilibrium and the fluid layer thins and cools, the delta-T driving the convention will weaken. Smaller cells of slower-moving fluid will mean a much weaker magnetic field. Now we only need to wait a few billion years to see if this is what will happen......

Ok, I have a question

[BlueEyes_Austin]

This implies that Neptune and Uranus actually possess a SURFACE that we could put a lander on. How crazy is that!