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The Moon's Magnetic Umbrellas
eldavojohn writes "When it comes to space exploration, there are things that are good for humans (water) and things that are bad for humans (radiation). In order for exploration of the moon to occur, its lack of a global magnetic shield to block solar radiation must be addressed. Luckily, scientists have discovered that there are highly magnetized areas of the moon's crust that could shield settlements." From the article: "Current evidence suggests that impact-basin ejecta materials [material blasted out by huge asteroid or comet impacts] are the most likely sources of many or all of the magnetic fields ... These ejecta contain microscopic metallic iron particles that are the carriers of the magnetization."
can't we just hide underneath some rocks? or can radiation get through moon rock since it's made of cheese?
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And not just the umbrellas, the whole moon.
How the fuck can cheese possibly be magnetic!
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I understand there's a large magnetic anomoly in the Tycho crater...
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
After all, the huge magnetic field deformation created by the buried monolith in Tycho crater should have been a clear indicator that a near-by moonbase could be safely built. Right ?
... all happened just before the Jupiter misson - Discovery, wasn't it, back in 2001 or thereabouts ? They had a HAL900 on board, remember ?
Sure, it's old news
So the question that remains to be answered is
Do asteroids hit the same spot twice??So does that mean that terraforming is out of the question? I mean, even if we could create and hold an atmosphere (impossible for lack of gravity), would the moon remain uninhabitable due to a weak magnetosphere?
Other things that are bad for humans in space:
...
Vaccuum
Lack of hospitable worlds within a light-lifetime of Earth
Space junk in LEO
Lack of food/flora/fauna
Lack of easy return trips
Metric/English conversions
Klingons
Frakking toasters
Pod bay doors
Random ion storms which give superhuman powers
Maniacal dictators who for some reason want to use their newest Deus Ex Machina on Earth
That'd be much more interesting if the story played out like Mr. A.C. Clarke wrote it./>
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We might as well face it... settlements on planets is never going to happen. Couple of reasons:
1) The moon is too ugly and the gravity too light.
2) Mars is ugly too, but even beyond that, it won't be allowed because we won't want to screw up the natural environment for study.
The future of space settlements is space stations floating in space. We can have any environment we want (including green), we can simulate natural gravity via spinning, and we can engineer shielding. Settling other planets is romantic, but impractical, and arguably very few people would want to live on a dead rock anyway.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Let's build our moon colony in the areas where there are strange magnetic readings. And when those colonists disappear mysteriously, we can send in a crack commando team to investigate. This would lead to entertaining action, some mild humor, and perhaps even a little romance.
Please excuse my highly uninformed and profoundly speculative conjecture here.
But in regards to radiation shielding, could the recent advancements in metamaterial technology possibly offer a solution?
After all, there has been recent success with microwave radiation (albiet at a very limited and precise wavelength) - could meta-materials be concieved which block the other popular radation types?
What would be the major hurdles to overcome?
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Artificial magnetic shielding is surprisingly economical. Big weak fields do a fine job deflecting charged particles, and you can generate them with a superconducting cable around the rim of a crater. Polar craters (where the ice might be) are plenty cold enough for today's high temperature superconductors.
The article is great, because it does outline the major problem facing permanent settlement on the Moon: radiation. But there are some other necessities that need to be addressed, like reinforcing of the magnetic field during solar flares, the crater's proximity to other elements for the production of power and water, and the need for solar power.
While it's a great start, it doesn't answer all the questions, which leaves scientists and future lunar explorers with a great question: Do they build up a complex network of sites, or continue to try to find the ideal spot?
With increasing pressure from other countries to get to the Moon first, as well as additional programs to settle the moon as a research outpost, the pressure is on. So while this is a great find, and will augment any magnetic solution that mankind could come up with, it's only part of the puzzle. That being said, it is an important part of the puzzle.
While strong magnetic fields might be a benefit in the aforementioned radiation shield application, aren't there certain situations where such an environment might not be a benefit, like working with computers maybe, or being a human?
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Forgive the stupid question, but if all we need is a little magnetic field, wouldn't a few strategically placed Curiously Strong Magnets solve the problem?
That's no moon...
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there are things that are good for humans (water) and things that are bad for humans (radiation)
Being a fan of light and heat but not drowning, does that make me a weird human?
As the old saying goes: all things in moderation. Radiation's pretty useful, just as water is. Overwhelm my body with either though and things start to go wrong. In the history of humanity though, I'm guessing more people have died from too much water than too much radiation - if only due to the convenience of access to excess of one and not the other.
Couldn't we just get one of the guys in the engineering drpartment to extend the Earth's magnetic shield out around the moon? I'm quite certain tht I've heard that idea proposed before ...
Why Can't they just make a dome over the settlement made out of the same gold coated/embedded glass that is used on space suits? Doesn't it block radiation? Wouldn't the building probably made just like the ISS be able to block radiation? Do we really need astrounauts to procreate anyway?
Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit!
Or can anyone else see a small dark oblong in the middle of the picture? Kind of like a monolith...
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Those fields are obviously pollution left behind by some fool leaving his Cavorite sphere idling in park. Will someone please think of the Selenites?
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Wasn't the question of surviving solar radiation on the moon solved in the 60's. Those guys also figured out how to survive the Van Allen belt, so why don't we just ask them? I'm sure some of the Apollo engineers are still alive.
I guess this is just more evidence that humans have yet to land on the moon.
The best part of building near a crater is you are safer from future meteor strikes; it sort of follows the whole "lightening never strikes twice" principle. Speaking of which, I wonder how lightening rods work.....
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according to some study, the hole in the ozone layer is causing people to receive significantly higher amounts of radiation on Earth and if it gets any worse, we'd be seeing bad problems because of it. So let's say the ozone layer and atmoshphere were gone completely. We'd pretty much be dead even with the Earth's giant magnetic field so apparently that's not enough. But the good news is that lead suits weigh less on the moon and would be just enough to prevent muscle deterioration :)
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Magnetic umbrellas?
Listen, fellas.
Stop the rays
Or so they tell us:
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Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
...or does ejecta on the face bring up a completely different topic of conversation?
I think we might have found TMA-1!
:q! Oh crap, not again...
I'm all for a moon settlement. If we're going to have astronauts, last place I want them is here on Earth. A little over a month ago, an astronaut moved into my neighborhood and simultaneously all the leaves died and fell off our oak trees. Go eat your Tang upside-down in space where you belong.
Don't you know what happens when you mix a magnetic field and iron-nickle asteroids floating by? Haven't these scientists ever watched cartoons? Oh, it makes me so angry!
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big honkin space magnets.
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The whole concept of colonizing the moon is doomed. Oh wonderful, we now have tiny areas with magnetic fields. That's great! That only leaves half a dozen other fatal problems to contend with. There's no water on the moon. There's no atmosphere at all, so everything has to be vacuum proof. Due to this "no atmosphere" thing, lunar dust is made of microscopic sharp edges which makes it more dangerous to humans than the worst mining dust or volcanic dust from earth, and it's also sticky so it gets on everything and will find its way into habitations by clinging to space suits. There isn't enough gravity for humans to maintain normal bone density. And finally what is the economic case for being there, given that it will never be terraformed? Is it He3, for use in fusion reactors that may never work (De + T fusion may be the only reaction that works).
What a collasal waste of money this whole thing is.
I always imagined that any settlement on a planetary body without atmosphere would occur underground where several meters of rock would help protect you from both temperature and radiation. I imagine Mars is filled with natural caverns, but I don't know about the moon. I'd think we'd be able to tell by using unmanned rovers that have some kind of ground penetrating sonor.
any way, I doubt the surface is the best place to settle on most planets.
True - the atmosphere does stop some of the radiation, such as how the ozone layer stops UV light. The majority of the radioactive particles are stopped by the magnetic field, with part of it coming in to the atmosphere in the form of the Arora Borealis.
It's sorta mixed. Cosmic rays are basically high energy protons and heavier ions that are totally stripped of electrons. The lower energy ones are generally part of a fluid flow from the Sun that gets almost totally diverted around the Earth by the Earth's magnetic field. The higher energy ones also get diverted somewhat, but sometimes not enough to prevent their hitting the atmosphere. These aren't actually radioactive, but they are energetic, which is just as bad. They like to get in amongst atoms and cause all sorts of trouble.
Fortunately, basically none of these primary cosmic ray particles that hit the atmosphere will themselves get through to the surface. Because they are made out of protons and neutrons, they participate in the 'strong interaction' (the same thing that holds nuclei together), so it is comparatively easy for them to hit the nucleus of some atom.
But, when the incoming proton hits and interacts with another nucleus, basically two things will happen: it will slow down by a quite a lot, and it will make a whole slew of other particles: kaons, pions, muons, electrons, neutrinos, etc. These are 'secondaries', and some of them may reach the surface.
Of course, if a neutrino reaches the surface, who cares? It will probably pass right through the entire planet without doing a thing. But if a muon or an electron goes into you, ouch! As it passes along, slowing down all the while, it will remove some electrons from molecules, which can cause some chemical changes. Usually it is not a problem, but on rare occasions, this kind of damage will cause cancer. Details about the exact mechanism remain a little mysterious. But the hypothesis is, if it damages some DNA and the DNA is not repaired properly and the cell does not initiate the self-destruct sequence, then you may have a cancerous cell, and you'd better hope that your immune system is up to the challenge.
If you don't like cosmic rays doing this to you, try living at low altitudes. Avoid cities like Denver or Mexico City. There is much less distance of atmosphere above you there, so the secondary particles don't have as good an opportunity to slow down or decay into other particles. Also, you should avoid spending much time flying -- especially on the US-Europe routes that go near the North Magnetic Pole. There is a significantly greater flux of cosmic rays up there. (The South Magnetic Pole has the same problem, but airlines generally don't want to fly you by there.)
Why the hell do we keep looking for the whiz-bang expensive solution, when there is an easy and standard solution already available and working? I'll tell you why:
We are afraid to succeed.
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I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
So get 'unspoiled'. Take some LSD and go watch the movie like millions of other people did when it was released. You'll be just amazed. Can't find any LSD? Ah, well, that was the 'other space program' that we lost since the 1960s. ...... zip, grind, splat"
Actually though, you're kind of lucky. The original 2001:A Space Odyssey was really long and boring. Its 'magic' depended upon its special effects and the degree that they were taken seriously at the time. Now, they would be really boring.
Still watching this film would allow to catch the occasional 'baby boomer' joke. Like: "Open the pod bay door, HAL" "Sorry, Dave" "Open the door, HAL" "No, Dave" "Control Alt Delete, HAL" "Sorry Daaaav
Clearly this is a build up of magnetic radiation coming from the nuclear waste dump on the other side of the moon.
Nothing to worry about, it's all perfectly natural.
Once again, NASA ignores the possibility (perhaps probability is a better word?) that the magnetism is the result of electrical exchange between bodies in space.
In 2005, the mission to comet Tempel 1 called Deep Impact shot a copper ball into that comet. To my knowledge, NASA scientists still have not adequately explained the results of that experiment even though plasma cosmologist accurately predicted the results *before* the impact occurred. For a thorough summary of those results, visit http://www.thunderbolts.info/pdf/ElectricComet.pdf . There, you will learn that there is substantial evidence that cometary tails and comas are the result of electrical processes rather than any sort of sublimation of any icy snowball. When the copper ball got close, before impact, a small flash of lightning occurred. And in the video of the ball's approach, you can see white patches on the comet (charge equalization with the ball). Any critical eye in possession of a detailed photograph of a cometary tail can notice something peculiar about the dirty snowball theory. The zig-zaggy tail is lightning -- not a vapor trail. Vapor trails would not move in zig-zags. But more technically, we have yet to observe enough water on any comet that could create the tail and comas that we're seeing.
Why does this matter?
Well, it matters a lot! Because -- and this should be alarming to people -- the comets have craters just like asteroids and planets. If it is true as Thornhill and numerous other plasma cosmologists allege that these craters are the result of electrical machining, then it is possible that craters on the planets could also be the result of electrical charge transfers (aka lightning). And it shouldn't surprise anybody that lightning could leave magnetic traces of its activity. In fact, if it weren't for the big bang theory, then that might be our first guess.
Have you ever for a second stopped and wondered why all of these frickin impact craters are round!? Doesn't that seem like a bit too coincidental? Exactly how many impacts can you expect to occur at right-angles? If we're talking about lightning, however, it would be exactly the case that all of the craters would be round because the charge would travel the path of least resistance (a 90 degree angle connecting the two bodies).
Also, if we accept the plasma cosmologists' conclusions for the Deep Impact mission that comets glow because charge is being stripped from the comet, then first of all, this means that the Sun is emitting an electric field that is causing this charge separation (and that's a whole different story!). But just as importantly, it also implies that such similar charge movements and transfers can occur for planets. All of these things are fundamental concepts of plasma physics, and considering that 99.99% of the observable universe consists of matter in the plasma state, it might be wise to listen to those guys.
When the Space Shuttle Columbia went down some years ago, a rogue amateur astronomer captured an image of the Shuttle's plasma exhaust being struck by a bolt of lightning, which could very clearly be seen to travel from the upper atmosphere onto the exhaust plasma trail and in the direction of the Shuttle. This image coincided precisely with the Shuttle's malfunctioning and Shuttle parts have been observed to have electrical machining that one would expect from a lightning strike. However, NASA discounted this explanation on the basis that the lightning was too high in the atmosphere to exist (planets cannot transfer charge with outer space, in other words), and that instruments were unable to hear any lightning strike (even though it's known by plasma cosmologists that lightning in the upper atmosphere wouldn't make the same sounds it does in the lower atmosphere). It's also important to note that meteorologists still do not fully understand the origins of lightning, so it's rather curious that NASA could b
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If we could crash a bunch of iron-nickel asteroids onto Mars, could we approximate a similar effect?
Suppose you could impart a charge to the asteroids, making them magnetic...then tow 'em to Mars, and drop them...leaving magnetically-shielded, iron-rich craters, for later inhabitation and mining.
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Best movie ever! (The book is good too)