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Solar Wind Rips Up Martian Atmosphere
IHateEverybody writes "Scientists have found evidence that the solar wind is ripping off chunks of the Martian atmosphere, which could possibly explain why Mars has such a thin atmosphere today. The chunks are being ripped up along 'magnetic umbrellas,' which are bubbles of magnetic fields which rise from the ground and extend above the Martian atmosphere. This is surprising because scientists previously thought that these magnetic umbrellas protected the Martian atmosphere. Now it looks like exactly the opposite might be true."
A magnetic field.
At least it's not ripping up Uranus.
As I understand it, the Earth's magnetic field is healthy and extends up past the bulk of our atmosphere. The pushing from the solar wind deforms our atmosphere, but any ripples or other magnetic eddies are considerably smaller and that possible "ripping" of an Earth eddy would take place pretty far above the planet. I might guess that the Earth's magnetic field is consistent enough to prevent any large eddies from forming in the first place.
I would say that you are correct. The article is saying that the SMALL LIMITED mag fields on Mars allows, even encourages, the ripping. Our field encompasses the entire planet and prevents. I have wondered if the moon acting on our core is what makes it spin. As such, it would seem that pushing a large asteroid (perhaps ceres) around Mars would re-start its core spinning. Of course, that tech is out of our reach for a while, and we do not have enough data to know if something like that would work.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I'm not certain it's actually necessary to fix it. The atmosphere would be stripped away on a timescale of millions of years. If you're capable of terraforming Mars to begin with, you're capable of replacing lost air faster than the Sun can strip it away. It's probably cheaper to do that than to rig up some enormous artificial magnetic shield.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
There is a small loss of atmosphere anyway from other factors. Still, the atmosphere is slowly regenerated by the combination of gaseous emissions (like from volcanoes) and their conversion to life sustaining gases by low order life forms (plankton or something like that). Those emissions are slowing down because the Earth is cooling down but the loss of atmosphere (by natural causes) is way beyond our foreseeable future (maybe more than the lifespan of the Earth).
ics
I dunno, the 3rd and 4th arm are great and come in handy all the time, but on the downside my 2nd head is WAYYY to talkative.
I may agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to face the consequences of saying it.
This says different: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mars_core_030306.html
You're correct. Earth's protective magnetic field is generated by the molten iron core. When the planets were created, they all had the same molten core, but over time, they solidify. It takes longer in bigger planets because the core is bigger (duh). In Earth, the outer core remains molten while the inner core has solidified. Likewise, Venus, being a relatively big rocky planet also has an atmosphere that's protected by its magnetic field (hence the clouds on it surface). Mercury and Mars are smaller, their cores are likely less molten, so their magnetic fields are weaker and therefore they have no atmosphere. Eventually, Earth's core will also solidify so the atmosphere will get ripped away from here too.
I have left slashdot and am now on Soylent News. FUCK YOU DICE.
Ha. Ha.
Phobos and Deimos have mass, relative to Mars, of jack and shit. Mars/Eris relative mass would at least be in the same (decimal) order of magnitude as Earth/Moon.
Apparently, Jello pudding does not actually make for a good planetary core.
Oddly, Venus' atmosphere is much thicker than ours. Although it has a molten core, it still has a very weak magnetic field. The leading theory is that Earth's magnetic field is somehow helped by plate tectonics, which generally doesn't happen on Venus. Plate tectonics may help molten fluids circulate to help run the magnetic dynamo. A lessor theory is that our moon plays a role. It may be a combo. It's still an open issue.
Table-ized A.I.
A factor contributing to its weak magnetic field is probably that Venus rotates very slowly (its day is 243 earth days).
It might also be worth mentioning that Venus' rotation is also retrograde:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrograde_motion
Now this might not be a factor in itself but whatever caused Venus to spin slowly in the opposite direction to everything else in the solar system probably had some effect on its magnetic field as well.
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