Halloween Solar Storm Nearing Heliopause

PipianJ writes "Various sources are reporting that NASA has been tracking the Halloween solar storms of last year as they head towards the end of the solar system and the beginning of interstellar space, the heliopause, in the near future. In related news, scientists now believe that it was solar storms that ripped water from Mars, causing it to be the dry barren wasteland it is today."

Comments

Kim Stanley Robinson got it an bit wrong

[bigsteve@dstc]

Remember the Green / Blue Mars novels by Kim Stanley Robinson where they create an atmosphere on Mars? Well it looks like it wouldn't be viable without also finding a way to generate an Earth-like magnetic field.

Re:Soo..

[barawn]

..if the solar storms blew away water from mars upper atmosphere during a long period of time, which led to the drying of mars oceans, the same (but maybe in a lesser extent) should have happend to earth.


Mars has no magnetic field. Its core cooled off tremendously faster than Earth's, and so the magnetic field froze out.

Earth, being more massive, also has a much smaller scale height, so that liquid water vapor extends to much smaller heights. Combine those two and the water vapor loss rate for Earth is tremendously less.

Until the output of the Sun increases in a few hundred million years, the water cycle is stable. (Yes, a couple hundred million years - Earth will be out of the habitable zone *before* the Sun goes red giant).


(I think it is quite sad that we are surrounded by all these planets that once was easily terraformable but now they are all "dead". ..and we are next) :(

Well, yes - life requires energy, and the Sun is burning through it at an utterly incredible rate. Eventually it has to run out.

Of course, that's several hundred million years from now, and if we're still stuck on this planet by then, we deserve to go extinct.

If we really want a couple more, we could always move Venus out to Mars's orbit, and have Mars smash into it. Poof! Instant new Earth.