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

How Exactly

[GiveMeLinux]

(for the astronomers in the crowd) ...would the solar storms "rip" all the water from the planet, and then where would it all go?

Re:How Exactly

[niktemadur]

Here's another likely culprit for the lack of a magnetic field/shield: Earth has a HUGE satellite, the Moon, whereas Mars has two tiny, potato-shaped asteroidlets, Phobos and Deimos.

It is the interaction between Earth and Moon that creates the magnetic shield we have.

First off, we have tidal interaction, which gives Earth nice strong tugs, maintaining a molten state underneath us, thereby creating/enhancing a magnetic field. As to why the Moon is not molten inside, its' origins and composition will have something to do with it.

Secondly, the interplay between two large celestial bodies (Earth-Moon is technically a double planet, as is Pluto-Charon) expands and supercharges a magnetic field way beyond what it would be if a celestial body was alone. I read somewhere, sometime, that Earth-Moon has a magnetic field a hundred times stronger than it would be if Earth was a lone sphere.

Straightforward enough: no Moon, no shielding for Earth, for various reasons. Jupiter's moon Europa is cozily nestled inside its' host planet Jupiter, as well as Titan in Saturn; this is what another reason that makes them the most plausible life-sustaining places in our Solar System (other than Earth, of course).

I ignore the situation on Mercury and Venus, but whatever it is, solar winds and radiation, at those short distances, might cut through anything like Kevlar-busting bullets. On Mars, it will be like a regular bullet cutting through paper.

Re:How Exactly

[Anonymous Coward]

Who is the moron who gave this a +5 Informative? This is nothing but a giant morass of misinformation and total nonsense, deserving - at best - a +1 Eco-parody.

As a result the Earth has a spinning metallic core that generates a powerful magnetosphere and keeps the planet's mantle heated and molten, but Mars cooled long ago and has little magnetism.

This is - at best - a guess. The truth is we don't really know why our magnetosphere is stronger than Mars', or even why it exists! We also have no reason to think Mars cooled earlier than the Earth.

Mars, without a magnetic field to deflect harmful cosmic rays, saw its atmosphere and water irradiated. It is commonly known that molecules bombarded by high energy rays change energy states and often ionize. Earth's thick and magnetically protected atmosphere stayed safe below a thin layer of ozone that absorbs incoming UV radiation , but the inner atmosphere of Mars would become the equivalent of one huge ozone layer, reaching the surface. Ozone is a dangerous chemical capable of reacting with other substances on the surface much like nail polish remover acts on its target.

UV has absolutely nothing to do with solar storms, and most certainly cannot be described as "high energy". Even more, there just is no way in the world that UV would cause ionization - that's plain impossible.

Ozone is nothing but oxygen, albeit in a different molecular form. It reacts with everything, just like oxygen does (ever heard of rust)?

Soon Mars was reduced to a collection of high energy ionized gases over a rock surface, and an intense greenhouse effect set it.

What is connection between ionised gases and the green-house effect?

Simple home experiment: touch a neon lamp with your hand. You'll discover it is cool.

Think about your breathing-while you manually breathe in and out, carefully controlling your respiratory process in order to avoid suffocating, air that has already been processed builds up and creates pressure for release. The oxygen rich air goes down easy, but the used air wants to come out.

You breath manually? That's an achievement - I usually breath orally.

Breathing is a para-sympathic reaction to the concentration of CO2; you could breath pure N2 gas just as easily, though you would die shortly due to lack of oxygen. However, the breathing process would be comfortable.

It's the same for a planet-the remaining gases on Mars heated and energized until they escaped the planet's gravitational pull. Over millions of years this process stripped Mars of all water and organic substances, leaving it the barren wasteland it is today.

Is a hot/"energised" (whatever that means) gas lighter than other kinds? Why should it escape a gravitational field?

To remedy this during a terraforming process, it would be necessary to either constantly produce a fresh supply of oxygen to replace that which is lost, or inject the core with enough metallic matter to reach critical mass and build up the same type of core found within the Earth. Some far-out proposals suggest engineering a collision between Mars and one of its moons, such as Phobos or Deimos, in order to increase mass and introduce energy into the core.

Unlike our Moon, the Mars satellites are of negligible mass when compared to the planet itself, and thus crashing them into the planet (even if we could) would not add significantly to its mass. How crashing something into a planet would "introduce energy into the core" is a total mystery. Where would you take enough metal (planet, or at least asteroid sized) is an open question, and how would you "inject" it into the core is an interesting exercise.

Re:Magnetic Field

[Commander Trollco]

Yes, the magnetic field does deflect a lot of solar radiation.
Warning: blatant oversimplification!

Much of the solar flux comes in the form of charged particles, such as Hydrogen ions and electrons. Electrically charged particles are deflected by magnetic fields. Thus, a major portion of the solar wind does not reach the surface of Earth. To find out more, here is a helpful link.

Soo..

[Anonymous Coward]

..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.

Because of earths higher gravity, denser atmosphere and our magnetic field this effect might not at all have been that big, but over the billions of years it has probably made a noticeable decrease in earths oceans too?

If we take a look at Venus, a planet we believe had as much water as earth in the past, we find that it has no water either - and no magnetic field but it has about the same gravity as earth and a denser atmosphere => it is quite likely that a magnetic field is much more important for a planet to keep its water, than its atmosphere and/or gravity.

However, as I understand, during the period (several hundreds of years or more?) which the earths magnetic field changes polarity, which happends regularly, we have no magnetic "shield" and together with my statement that denser atmosphere and higher gravity than mars does not matter that much, earth should during this time also have lost some water in the same way as Mars/Venus?

So what am I shooting at here? Well I think it is an interesting question wether we (planet earth) had more water 5 billion years ago, or if it is largely unchanged? Maybe earth was totally covered in water? Maybe we will only have half as much, or no, water in 5 billion years? Or is earth in fact increasing its water-mass by sucking up comets? Are there any such data/measurements?

Maybe if we have such measurements from periods during which we had no magnetic field - we might be able to calculate the effects of solarwinds and thereby maybe evaluate this new Mars-theory plus maybe calculate wether earth might suffer the same destiny as Venus and Mars.

(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) :(

Re:Kim Stanley Robinson got it an bit wrong

[Graff]

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.

Not necessarily true. Yes, eventually Mars will lose most of its terraformed atmosphere and it will return to the state that it is currently in but that could take millions of years. We can certainly generate a ton more atmosphere than Mars loses and we can do so for a good, long time.

Not only that but if we were really innovative we would redirect a few comets or similar objects into a close orbit around Mars, releasing them onto the planet in a planned manner and further bulking up the atmosphere. This may be a bit beyond our current technology but we should be able to do it fairly soon.

By the time we are ready to terraform Mars we will almost definitely be able to do so.