NASA Proposes a Magnetic Shield To Protect Mars' Atmosphere (phys.org)

New submitter Baron_Yam writes: Apparently it is no longer necessarily science fiction to consider terraforming the red planet in a human lifetime. NASA scientists have proposed putting a magnetic shield at the Mars L1 Lagrange Point, diverting sufficient solar wind in hopes that the Martian atmosphere would thicken and heat the planet to the point of melting the ice caps, causing what remains of Martian water to pool on the surface. While not enough of a change to allow walking around without a space suit, this would make human exploration of the planet a much easier task.

Comments

No real information

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't mention much about how this magical magnetic barrier is going to be generated or powered. They also don't really know how long it will take a habitable atmosphere to form assuming it works at all, or what happens to everything if the shield fails at a later date and what kind of upkeep it would require. It sounds a lot like wishful thinking and hand-waving.

Re: No real information

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right, let's never have any ideas that are impractical, let's just plan to use basic well understood things like levers, and screws. You can do anything practical with these.

Re:No real information

[jandersen]

It sounds a lot like wishful thinking and hand-waving.

It probably is, at that. In my (limited) experience, phys.org tends to publish stories rich in big, glossy pictures, slightly sensationalising headlines and with a rather too "popular" (read: dumbed down) style. Maybe I'm being unfair, but I don't think their stories tend to qualify as real news, when most of it is a glossy writeup of things I have already seen elsewhere, on general news media like the BBC.

I think this is a fundamental problem when popularising science news - when you look at the totality of science, and especially the amazing discoveries made in the first half of the 20th century, it really is quite mind-blowing, but unfortunately this does not reflect the day-to-day reality of most science. Which is why most attempts at making science news popular and exciting are doomed to be disappointing.

As for the actual idea - I think it is well-established that a magnetic shield would be just the thing to protect the atmosphere of a planet (or the passengers of a spacecraft), but the technical challenges are enormous, and the benefits to Mars would probably be slow and rather minor. At this point it is mostly speculation, but of course, all the great things we now take for granted once were little more than dreams and handwaving, so who knows? Perhaps we find a way to produce a magnetic fields big and strong enough that would endure long enough with little maintenance, and perhaps we find a way to replenish Mars' atmostphere quickly enough to make it worth doing.

Re: No real information

[dougdonovan]

obviously the money people did lunch with charles and said...we're moving to mars. do what you have to do to make it livable and then there IS Trump.

Re: No real information

[Opportunist]

Every problem can be solved with gaffer tape and WD40.

Re:No real information

[Joce640k]

They don't mention much about how this magical magnetic barrier is going to be generated or powered.

If only there was an easy way to make working superconductors in near-zero ambient temperature environments.

(or even an easy way to read articles from the comfort of home)

Re:No real information

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I suppose the quantities required for a PLANET'S magnetic field will be quite trivial to manufacture, ship, and deploy to MARS.

And, as usual, you think space is cold when in fact it is not. It is a vacuum. You seem to be a programmer; your knowledge of reality seems to come from comic books.

Re:No real information

[hcs_$reboot]

This is why that won't happen any time soon. If we intend to discuss here all potential NASA projects, slashdot must be dedicated to that, along with 10 other websites.

Re:No real information

[vtcodger]

"They don't mention much about how this magical magnetic barrier is going to be ... powered."

Windmills. They work everywhere and are dirt cheap dontcha know? Seriously, I should think solar power. How much is needed? A lot I'm sure, but perhaps not as much as one might think. Basically, unlike here on Earth, the magnetic field they propose doesn't envelop the planet, it just deflects the solar wind a little bit -- just enough so it misses the planet.

Not the dumbest idea I've heard this week.

But I suspect the concept needs a LOT of work. For example, many of the purported benefits seem to envision conjuring up something like 60C in greenhouse warming from decidedly less solar input than Earth gets. I'm skeptical.

Re: No real information

[vtcodger]

"And space isn't cold, dumbass. It's not hot either. It's a vacuum."

Correct if you're thinking conduction. Wrong if you're thinking radiation.

And in any case, "dumbass" is probably right about superconducting magnets. They presumably will stay superconducting for a long time if they are protected from sunllght.

Re:No real information

[Ol Olsoc]

They don't mention much about how this magical magnetic barrier is going to be generated or powered. They also don't really know how long it will take a habitable atmosphere to form assuming it works at all, or what happens to everything if the shield fails at a later date and what kind of upkeep it would require. It sounds a lot like wishful thinking and hand-waving.

Didn't RTFA did ya?

1 - 2 Tesla or 10K to 20K Gauss is what they are looking at. It is quite possible that you won't even need a powered magnet, as Neodymium magnets are already in that range https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/....

The confusion probably comes from the idea that the magnet needs to be extremely powerful. This is not the case. At the earth's surface our own magnetic field tops out around 0.65 gauss.

Placing the big dumb magnet at the Lagrange point and having it deflect the charged particles is remarkably low maintenance.

Side note - the earth's magnetic field has been weakening, as it is wont to do on occasion. If at some point in the future it weakens to the point of not blocking the solar wind or cosmic rays, this bit of kit might turn out very helpful to us until our own magnetic field reasserts itself.

Re:No real information

[Ol Olsoc]

As for the actual idea - I think it is well-established that a magnetic shield would be just the thing to protect the atmosphere of a planet (or the passengers of a spacecraft), but the technical challenges are enormous, and the benefits to Mars would probably be slow and rather minor.

On the second point, yes, it would be slow. Probably multiple lifetimes worth of waiting. But on the first point, I was a little shocked at just how simple it might be. 1-2 Tesla is achievable without external power Neodymium magnets sit right about in the middle of that range. The biggest issues will be more mechanical, and for obvious reasons. Considering the implications, something like this might be important for the next earth geomagnetic reversal as well.

Perhaps we find a way to produce a magnetic fields big and strong enough that would endure long enough with little maintenance, and perhaps we find a way to replenish Mars' atmostphere quickly enough to make it worth doing.

If this works - we already have a zero or almost zero maintenance way to produce the field. I was pretty concerned about the lack of a magnetosphere on Mars as a gamestopper. This conceptcomes along, and it was a facepalm moment.

Re:No real information

[Ol Olsoc]

They don't mention much about how this magical magnetic barrier is going to be generated or powered.

If only there was an easy way to make working superconductors in near-zero ambient temperature environments.

(or even an easy way to read articles from the comfort of home)

Or Neodymium magnets. Remarkably strong.

Re:No real information

[Ol Olsoc]

This is why that won't happen any time soon. If we intend to discuss here all potential NASA projects, slashdot must be dedicated to that, along with 10 other websites.

Beats hell out of the endless stories on Apple's missing headphone jack.

Re:No real information

[Ol Olsoc]

1 - 2 Tesla or 10K to 20K Gauss is what they are looking at. It is quite possible that you won't even need a powered magnet, as Neodymium magnets are already in that range https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org].

The energy in a magnetic field goes with with the field strength squared and the volume. There is a big difference in energy for a kilometers wide field and a permanent magnet that has a strong field just near the surface of the material. Unless you want to make your magnetic shield thing out of a permanent magnet almost the exact same size as the extent you require in space (so a neodymium magnet the size of a moon), you're looking at a superconductor with rather high amount of energy stored. For 1 T over something roughly the same volume as Mars, you're looking at ~6*10^25 J (about 10 billion megatons of tnt equivalent, or about how much energy we would get from a century worth of current global electrical energy production).

Get in touch with NASA right way to let them know this is impossible.

Then explain how an electromagnet doesn't have to be the same size as a inherent magnet.

Re:No real information

[pr0fessor]

TFA was about using a magnetic shield to protect against solar radiation and possibly raising the temperature enough over time to allow liquid water and make oxygen extraction easier... nothing magical.

Re:No real information

[JoeMerchant]

So, keeping a magnet at L1 does seem practical, but if we had a higher temp superconductor that robots could fabricate out of martian soil, that would seem to be the ticket: loop the whole planet.

Re:No real information

[JoeMerchant]

The problem is getting far field effects from an itty bitty coil - no matter if you have a 20T field at the middle, how long before that dissipates to less than Earth's magnetic field? Hint: they make these crazy fields in Tallahassee, and they don't affect compass needles on the other side of town. Mars is a few orders of magnitude bigger than a city...

Re:No real information

[JoeMerchant]

They don't mention much about how this magical magnetic barrier is going to be generated or powered.

If only there was an easy way to make working superconductors in near-zero ambient temperature environments.

(or even an easy way to read articles from the comfort of home)

Or Neodymium magnets. Remarkably strong.

Oh, that would be fun: launching thousands of tiny magnets into different orbits...

Re: No real information

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what they told me initally.

Now I have hairless genitalia.

Re: No real information

[cyberchondriac]

Or rerouting power / reversing the phase of the tachyon emission.

Re:No real information

[rgbatduke]

Hey, this is just the first step. Then we crash Europa into Mars and wait a few million years for it to cool and the water to recondense. We'll need the magnetic shield in the meantime unless Europa has enough of an iron core that the remelted Martian core turns magnetic.

Of course, we might hasten the cooling by a few hundred thousand years if we install a cloaking device at the same Lagrange point so that Mars is in its shadow.

All it takes is money, right? Unbelievably enormous amounts of money. And time, don't forget the time. Something like the entire world GDP for a few centuries. But what the heck, you're buying another whole planet, one in the same solar system, which makes this way, way more realistic a proposal than imagining travelling to a nearby star.

Well, except for the building a large enough field generator at a Lagrange point to shield a whole planet, and except for moving a good sized moon. Except for that.

rgb

Re:No real information

[rgbatduke]

So, 1-2 Tesla peak in a device how large? A meter? Ten meters? A kilometer? (what are we going to pay for, in other words) sitting in the middle of nowhere is going to be enough to deflect off-axis charged particles by how much? Bear in mind that Mr. Sun subtends a pretty substantial arc. One such that an entire planetoid object the size of the moon barely obstructs line of sight in a tiny penumbra, sometimes, at 384K kilometers...

So just how large a region WOULD we have to cover to actually put the entire planet of Mars in its deflection penumbra? Hmmm....

If we're going to this place, why not do the same thing for Mother Earth -- put a large cloud of stuff at the lagrange point, reduce insolation, fight global warming. Price is no object! Fantasies are free! Besides, what could go wrong?

rgb

Re:No real information

[ElizabethGreene]

L1 is an unstable Lagrange point though, so this contraption would need constant tweaking to stay in the right spot.

It would be nifty if we could figure out a way to tack into the Solar wind so this didn't require continuous resupply of propellant.

Re: No real information

[Opportunist]

Were you the guy that wanted to send me his pubes?

Re:No real information

[Spy Handler]

we just need to get Arnold Schwartzenegger's ass to Mars, he will take care of the rest

Re:No real information

[wasteoid]

Everyone knows there is an ancient Martian atmosphere generator beneath the surface.

Re:No real information

[Ol Olsoc]

So, 1-2 Tesla peak in a device how large? A meter? Ten meters? A kilometer? (what are we going to pay for, in other words) sitting in the middle of nowhere is going to be enough to deflect off-axis charged particles by how much? Bear in mind that Mr. Sun subtends a pretty substantial arc. One such that an entire planetoid object the size of the moon barely obstructs line of sight in a tiny penumbra, sometimes, at 384K kilometers...

So just how large a region WOULD we have to cover to actually put the entire planet of Mars in its deflection penumbra? Hmmm....

If we're going to this place, why not do the same thing for Mother Earth -- put a large cloud of stuff at the lagrange point, reduce insolation, fight global warming. Price is no object! Fantasies are free! Besides, what could go wrong?

rgb

Well, that escalated quickly! Howbow I just reply to your first questions, because sunlight blocking isn't related nor makes much sense to me.

The physical size of the magnet needed is going to be dependent upon a few factors. Distance away from Mars, and magnetic strength. The earth's magnetosphere is determined by a relatively large planet size, with a very weak magnetic field. .67 gauss at most. The 1-2 Tesla magnet at the Lagrange point will have the advantage of being a much stronger magnetic field. As for the final size, I don't have it handy, but I do suspect that the people who have made this study have. Someone else commented on Neodymium versus Electromagnet. Both would need to be the same physical size.

Re:No real information

[Socguy]

Might as well wait for the paper to be published.

Re: No real information

[cyberchondriac]

Well how is that going to reset the subroutines in your sub-neural positronic matrix?

Re:No real information

[rgbatduke]

Well, that escalated quickly! Howbow I just reply to your first questions, because sunlight blocking isn't related nor makes much sense to me.

Let's try to make it make sense. The solar wind is driven by light pressure. Particles do not, however, follow strict radii out from the sun. They have transverse velocity components as well as radial ones. Also, they are pushed by photons from all over the face of the sun, which have different impact angles, which constantly change their transverse velocity. To put it another way, the particles driven away from the sun that will eventually hit Mars have a phase space envelope at least as large as the truncated cone formed by the surface of revolution whose boundaries are the circumference of the Sun on one end and the circumference of mars at the other.

Now consider a satellite (say) 100m in diameter. Suppose you locate it at the Lagrange point so that it is always along the line between the center of the Earth and the center of the Sun. Question: Will it dim the total sunlight received by the Earth?

Not measurably. The penumbra of this little satellite extends from its dark side to the tip of the extended cone formed by the circumference of the satellite and the circumference of the Sun. Since the Sun is basically 0.5 degrees from the Earth or the Lagrange point either way, the height of this cone is found from tan(0.5 degrees \approx 0.02 rad) \approx 0.02 rad = 100/H, or
50x100 = 5 km. So the satellite will cast a complete shadow of the sun that starts out 100 m wide right behind the satellite, then shrinks to zero around 5 km (give or take a km, I'm being lazy) . Beyond that you are in the umbra, which basically means that you are in bright sunlight from the annulus of sun surface visible around the satellite. The further out you go, the smaller the ratio of the occluded part to the directly visible part. By the time you reach the earth, the satellite is completely invisible -- the umbra is irrelevantly dimmed relative to no satellite at all, and it "covers" less of the sun's face from any viewpoint on Earth than a medium sized sunspot.

Now, if somebody were to tell you "hey, we're going to fix global warming by putting a sun shield in geosync orbit to reduce the total insolation of the Earth", your first concern would be to think about the geometry of that penumbral cone with a known cone height of roughly 5 earth radii vs a 0.5 degree Sun. Just how large would it have to be to reduce total insolation by a single whopping percent? The answer is really, really large. Even at only 5 Earth radii, which is not the distance to a Lagrange point. At the Lagrange point, really really REALLY REALLY large.

Now, is the solar wind deflection by a magnet going to be exactly like this? No, of course not. The magnetic field doesn't have a sharp cutoff -- it drops off roughly like 1/r^3 from the center of the (presumably dipole) magnet. Also, the force acting on the solar wind (charged only) particles depends on their charge and speed, the acceleration depends on their mass as well, and it has the usual nasty cross products in it so that it only really exerts a large force when particles run across the field at right angles. One would LIKE to think that a small deflection far away produced by a magnet large enough to produce a reasonable deflection a REALLY REALLY large distance away from the magnet could create a shadow as large as Mars, but it is by no means clear that this is the case, and just saying "hey, we can make really big magnets" doesn't actually help. I've got really really big magnets in my house -- ones I've pulled out of dead hard drives, that can basically hold a (small) newspaper pinned to your fridge. IF you get them within an appallingly short distance of the fridge. From a meter away, you can't feel any force at all. If you take an old CRT television or computer monitor and wave this really really strong magnet from ten or twenty meters away, it has

Re:No real information

[umghhh]

So we have so far:

1. every finished project started with some idea, that idea may have changed and be augmented between inception and final production facility
2. most ideas are dumb

Somehow I do not see contradiction here. You call each other dumbuasses - each such statement may be true. Gosh when I look in the past I am ashamed of my own dumbassism. Everybody has a moment of glory.
Thus I conclude that this discussion is of little informational values so far.

Re: No real information

[syntotic]

We expect NASA to be the difference between wishful thinking / scamming / excess of confidence, and what is scientifically and At The Time feasible and possible. X wants to reach Pluto and leave a permanent observatory satellite there? Laugh a little bit, nothing to see, keep going... NASA says we can expect big business from parachuting off the Space Station? Stop. Take it seriously! Ask how much it will cost. I would not be reading nor writing this if it had not mentioned NASA, that is for real. After all, there is a lot of money paid into real research and assessment in NASA.

Re:No real information

[syntotic]

Maybe some special asteroid we do not know about was discovered?

Re:No real information

[painandgreed]

L1 is an unstable Lagrange point though, so this contraption would need constant tweaking to stay in the right spot.

It's going to need constant tweaking anyway considering it's going to be absorbing at least some of the energy that is enough to knock off a 100 grams of matter per second out of Mars' gravity well. Probably a lot as the solar wind gets caught in this stations own radiation belts (and will probably produce some wonderful lights at the poles). I'd bet they do something like a Bussard ramjet and use the field to knock some solar wind away, while collecting the opposite charge, and then use that as fuel for a ion drive that will keep the station in place.

Let's do it...

[Camel Pilot]

What the hell are we waiting for? Having 4.2 Billions years of evolutionary investment held captive at the bottom of one gravity well is not a good long term strategy.

Re:Let's do it...

[h33t l4x0r]

All life has the same amount of evolutionary investment by your measure. So let's send some microbes and call it a day. Don't terraform Mars, how about let Mars be Mars.

Re:Let's do it...

[Wescotte]

Cave Johnson would like a word with you.

Re:Let's do it...

[stud9920]

Don't terraform Mars, how about let Mars be Mars.

Damn Reddie!

Re:Let's do it...

[Anonymous Coward]

How did I know some useful idiot would jump up and utter the words Gravity Well just to demonstrate what a perfect hipster he is.

Re:Let's do it...

[Kjella]

What the hell are we waiting for? Having 4.2 Billions years of evolutionary investment held captive at the bottom of one gravity well is not a good long term strategy.

And for the first 4.19999 billion years we didn't have homo sapiens. For 4.1999999 billion years ago we were in the Dark Ages. And 4.19999999 billion years ago we fought WWI without any real rocketry. Dragging in astronomical time scales is more an argument that there's no urgency at all, if life survives 0.01% longer than it has we have hundreds of thousands of years to make it to the stars. And we could survive a dino-killer here on Earth, of course by we I don't mean 99.9% of us but humanity as such.

Re:Let's do it...

[Opportunist]

And even if not... it's worth a try.

Could we send Erdogan and Putin along, too? For ... umm... backup.

Re:Let's do it...

[Maritz]

Only on slashdot would the term 'gravity well' be associated with 'hipster'. Most hipsters I've encountered are aggressively uninterested in science and tech apart from iPhones.

Re:Let's do it...

[Maritz]

The nuclear stockpiles that exist on this planet make it pretty unlikely we'll see out the next century or so. Doesn't even have to be a deliberate act. More likely to be accidental. Given that, I think the urgency is warranted. Our ability to deal with existential threats is one of our worst competencies.

Re:Let's do it...

[Opportunist]

Hell, you know our record when it comes to Mars missions, don't you? The total success rate is just over 50%, so ... Just send them again if they survive at first.

Re:Let's do it...

[swb]

Is that you, Ann Clayborne?

Re:Let's do it...

[Anonymous Coward]

You *do* understand that the radioactive material in your precious "stockpiles" decays within decades? Right? They need constant maintenance and repair. They are not these comic book weapons you seem to think they are.

I understand that Doomsday and being saved by space are part of your religion, but please, try to join us in reality.

Re: Let's do it...

[shortscruffydave]

Here is the truth... If we do not get off this rock and escape this gravity well then the entire species is doomed.

...being doomed is probably no more or less than we deserve. To believe that we're the absolute pinnacle of evolution and deserve to last for ever is sheer arrogance. In the overall scheme of things we're just like the dinosaurs - dominant and influential, but ultimately just another note on the planet's timeline.

I just hope we get wiped out before we have the opportunity to head to another planet and start wrecking that one as well

Re:Let's do it...

[Kjella]

The nuclear stockpiles that exist on this planet make it pretty unlikely we'll see out the next century or so. Doesn't even have to be a deliberate act. More likely to be accidental. Given that, I think the urgency is warranted. Our ability to deal with existential threats is one of our worst competencies.

The most powerful nuke tested was 50 MT. The world's total nuclear arsenal is around 6400 MT. The dino-killer was 100.000.000 MT. We could obliterate all major population centers and contaminate the surrounding areas. Whirl enough dust into the athmosphere to send the planet into nuclear winter. We still wouldn't have enough nukes to hit every rural farm in the middle of nowhere. Maybe Florida would be more like Canada, but it wouldn't be uninhabitable. It would be the end of civilization as we know it. It wouldn't be the end of humanity as we know it.

Re: Let's do it...

[vtcodger]

"Here is the truth... If we do not get off this rock and escape this gravity well then the entire species is doomed. It is best that we start looking for ways to do so while we still retain the material components needed to do so."

With all due respect, you are probably grossly underestimating the cost and difficulty of establishing viable colonies off planet. If you really think a fairly safe habitat for a breeding population needs to be built, by far the cheapest alternative would be to hollow out a very deep hole somewhere remote, equip it with stand alone power, water and air recycling, and farms. That'll run a goodly fraction of a trillion USD I think. Doing the same thing in space? More, a whole hell of a lot more. Likely more than the world's entire current GDP. And that's for a few thousand people.

There will probably come a time to colonize, although I'm skeptical that the usual candidates -- the Moon, Mars, the asteroid belt -- are ever going to be very desirable targets. But we need a lot better technology than we currently have.

For now, and maybe another century or two, we're stuck here I think.

For starters, maybe it'd be a good idea to ease up on that fruitful and multiplying thing.

Re:Let's do it...

[vtcodger]

"You *do* understand that the radioactive material in your precious "stockpiles" decays within decades? Right?"

Sadly, not right I think. Yes the Tritium in thermonuclear weapons has a fairly short half life of 12 years. But unfortunately, the fissionable components U-235, Pu-237 have half lives of 700 million years and 28,000 years respectively.

Re:Let's do it...

[bluegutang]

No matter what happens to Earth, it's going to be a lot more habitable than Mars will ever be.

Over the last 500 million years, Earth's temperature has varied by less than 15 degrees C in either direction. Mars' average temperature is about 70 degrees C less than that of Earth.

One could make similar arguments regarding Earth's atmospheric pressure, oxygen level, magnetic field, and so on.

It's hard to conceive of a human or non-human catastrophe will disrupt Earth to the point that it's less habitable than Mars.

Re:Let's do it...

[drinkypoo]

It wouldn't be the end of humanity as we know it.

I think that probably depends on how widespread the bombing is. Spread enough radiation around and you're sure to see things change one way or another, even if it's "only" because people have to live substantially differently as a precaution for some years.

Re:Let's do it...

[Thud457]

Conservative bathroom obsessions...

Individual private bathrooms for all.
Problem solved.
Expensive? Hell mate, you're the one that brought it up as a problem, what are you whining about now?

Done.
Can we move on to solving real problems now?

Re:Let's do it...

[denzacar]

Tritium is what makes the big kaboom. Without it, it's basically just the fuse going off, not the bomb.
Which is why nukes from the '60s, '70s and the '80s must be refurbished periodically at the cost of hundreds of billions of dollars.

And while tritium deteriorates... so do other elements on the periodic table in the presence of radiation.
Nukes are an ongoing chemistry experiment even just sitting there.
Which is why they must be refurbished periodically at the cost of tens of billions of dollars to make sure that their wiring or their proppelent didn't transmute into cheese.

Re: Let's do it...

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Without consciousness, everything is pointless. There is no point in not wrecking some other planet if nothing is there.

Even your feeble, warped mind won't be present to appreciate it's idiotic non-existence.

Re:Let's do it...

[CrimsonAvenger]

the fissionable components U-235

Note that exactly one (1) bomb in history has actually used U-235. They dropped it on Hiroshima.

Pu-237

Pu-239. Half-life 24K-years.

Re:Let's do it...

[umghhh]

While I think fighting a few ugly leisons on the arse of the world is good.
I think even better is investing in condom production as the main reason we have a problem is that there are 7.5b people demanding steaks, fries and circus as well as air-conditioning and transport for their excessive fat. Garbage disposal of these 7.5b apes is a problem too and it seems the only way to resolve the issue is reducing on numbers.

Re:Let's do it...

[bluegutang]

Yes, it's the bar if you're deciding whether you need to colonize Mars.

Re: Let's do it...

[crimson tsunami]

You think the Universe will run out of planets if we fuck up a few?

Isn't L1 unstable?

[slashcross]

Wouldn't this device just push itself out of the L1 point if it worked? Deflecting the solar wind should transfer momentum to the magnet, then it should fall in towards Mars. No?

Re:Isn't L1 unstable?

[Henning Rogge]

You don't place it exactly at L1, you place it slightly out of L1 so the pressure of the solar wind will be countered by a gravity pull towards the Sun.

Of course you need some "thrusters" to keep the thing at the right place, but this should be easy to do by changing the shape of the magnet field, using the solar wind itself to move the shield around.

Not easy, but technically possible

Re:Isn't L1 unstable?

[Opportunist]

Yes, L1 isn't stable in all eternity, but for all practical purposes it's "stable enough".

Re:Isn't L1 unstable?

[Opportunist]

We can build another probe should that one eventually croak.

Where is your spare Earth?

Re:While were at it

[KiloByte]

Well, a 22km (72,000 foot for those using medieval units) mountain is not high enough for you? Add water and you'll have snow.

That's neat. Yay, Mars

[sheramil]

Screw Mars, maybe we should be thinking about putting one at EARTH's L1 point.

Re:That's neat. Yay, Mars

[Maritz]

Earth has a powerful magnetic field. You might as well suggest oceans. ;)

Re:That's neat. Yay, Mars

[sheramil]

Earth has a powerful magnetic field.

for the moment.

Re:That's neat. Yay, Mars

[Fire_Wraith]

I wanted to say that there was a movie where they did something like that, like one of the Highlander movie sequels, but then I remembered there aren't any sequels to Highlander.

Re:That's neat. Yay, Mars

[Ol Olsoc]

Earth has a powerful magnetic field. You might as well suggest oceans. ;)

Putting one up to protect earth might be a fine idea some day. The Magnetic field of earth (~.65 gauss at the surface) is possibly making way for one of it's reversals at present - it's certainly weakening. If it approaches 0, an artificial magnetic field might come in handy to tide us over until the earth gets it's own back.

Re:That's neat. Yay, Mars

[Ol Olsoc]

There is plenty of time if our magnetic field fails. First, it will likely weaken, not just switch off. Second, even if it switches off, the atmosphere isn't stripped quickly. It starts thinning, giving you decades to get that magnetic shield in place.

You forgot about the solar wind and cosmic rays having free access. That would happen much more quickly than atmospheric stripping.

Re:That's neat. Yay, Mars

[MightyYar]

Just stay on the side of the earth not facing the sun.

Re:That's neat. Yay, Mars

[thinkwaitfast]

True that.

Re:That's neat. Yay, Mars

[Ol Olsoc]

Just stay on the side of the earth not facing the sun.

The ultimate nomads! 8^)

Re:That's neat. Yay, Mars

[painandgreed]

Screw Mars, maybe we should be thinking about putting one at EARTH's L1 point.

Damn straight! Earth first! Make Mars our bitch!

Re:While were at it

[AJWM]

Just watch out for the escarpment at the bottom. At as much as 8km high, that first step is a doozy.

Timescale is all wrong

[goodmanj]

This is a cool idea, but do the math: if you were able to shut off the reported 0.1 kg/s of atmospheric mass loss, how long does it take to double the atmospheric mass (about 2.5 x 10^16 kg)?

Related question: does it count as terraforming if the Sun blows up before you finish the job?

Re:Timescale is all wrong

[Xyrus]

If the sun blows up, that would be terra-unforming. No points awarded.

Re:Timescale is all wrong

[poofmeisterp]

If the sun blows up, that would be terra-unforming. No points awarded.

...but, but but, we did something that transformed a whole planet!!! That counts for something!
*snort* :)

Re:Missing one very obvious point

[goodmanj]

Billions.

Re:How to pay for it

[Notabadguy]

In general if we deport all the foreign criminals and illegal aliens ahd their families we wiil save billions in incarceration costs, and the cost to society from all their descrtuction, muder, and thievery. All of this wasted money can go to space exploration and discovery!

I say that we deport them all to Greenland. They can be our Australia, and in 100 years, Nuuk and Sisimiut will be full of sexy eskimo women who will have to overpay Microsoft and Steam for the shipping costs of digital distribution to their far away island.

Re:While were at it

[CeasedCaring]

Simples:- https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Hey

[Dunbal]

I know a kid inventor who can do wonders with stuff from Wal Mart I'm sure he can come up with something.

Positive feedback

[Ihlosi]

This is a cool idea, but do the math

The idea is to start a positive feedback loop - heat up the planet to release currently frozen volatiles (CO2, etc), which in turn will increase the temperature even more.

Over a period of time, the dynamics of this process will be exponential, until it becomes self-limiting (i.e. most of the volatiles have been released into the atmosphere and further temperature increases will not lead to more of them being released.)

Re:Positive feedback

[Anonymous Coward]

Kickstart it by exploding every nuke we have on the poles as well.

Re:Positive feedback

[Ihlosi]

Kickstart it by exploding every nuke we have on the poles as well.

Dropping a few space rocks on Mars might work better and add even more volatiles to the planet.

Re:Positive feedback

[Ihlosi]

How do drop "space rocks" on a planet?

1. Make a list of known space rocks of suitable size and composition.

2. Sort list by amount of delta-v required to have each candidate impact on Mars.

3. Pick one of the candidates with the lowest delta-v requirements.

4. Apply necessary delta-v.

.. what? We're talking about a plan to create a planet-sized magnetic shield. If we assume we can do that, then moving a few space rocks shouldn't be too hard?

Re:Positive feedback

[gumbi west]

I'm unsure if you didn't read, "known space rocks" or find it hard to make lists.

Re:Positive feedback

[Ihlosi]

Funnily enough, even doing step one in your list is bloody difficult with our current capabilities.

Seems to work just fine for Earth.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Or the asteroid belt:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Then again, putting a planet-sized artificial magnetosphere in Mars L1 is pretty much outside our current capabilities. So I assume that if we manage to put the artificial magnetosphere there, our capabilities then will be beyond those we have now.

Re:Positive feedback

[denzacar]

90% of rocks, bigger than 1 kilometer in diameter and floating around Earth, should be enough for everyone.

Re:Positive feedback

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Funnily enough, even doing step one in your list is bloody difficult with our current capabilities.

A hundred years ago you were waiting for a horse to take you places, or maybe an electric trolley if you lived in a big city.

I am astounded at the goobering ignorance of fools who think they have any idea what tech will be like in 100 years, when it will be more changed than it was from 100 years ago.

Re:Positive feedback

[PPH]

1. Make a list of known space rocks of suitable size and composition.

We tried that. But someone used MongoDB and we couldn't figure out how to query it on a time scale comparable to terraforming.

Re:Positive feedback

[painandgreed]

.. what? We're talking about a plan to create a planet-sized magnetic shield. If we assume we can do that, then moving a few space rocks shouldn't be too hard?

Not quite. However, I did sit down and do the math one day. There is about 20% of needed material to give Mars a reasonably comfortable breathable atmosphere is already on the planet int eh form of ices. The rest could be provided by about 1000 comets about the size of Halley's comet. Assuming ideal delta-V requirements and that it is trivial to heat the material already on the planet, I figured out the energy requirements for getting those 1000 comets to Mars from nearby Oort cloud not too far past Pluto in 100 years. The end result was a number that was a fraction (about a third IIRC) of the total daily energy output of the sun. So basically to even begin, you need an infrastructure capable of capturing somewhere around a few tenths of a percent of the energy coming out of the sun with no losses for a hundred years. Given that, something like putting up solar mirrors to heat Mars or even create a magnetic shield for it at its L1 are trivial items probably written off in the Misc listing of the overall project budget.

... and sun shades for Venus.

[Ihlosi]

Wasn't that also suggested at some point? Putting a shield, possibly in the form of a large solar power plant, at Venus' L1 Lagrange point to cool off the planet until the CO2 can be siphoned (and shipped to Mars?).

Re:Missing one very obvious point

[Maritz]

I would imagine that it's more to do with making Mars a less harsh environment with respect to radiation. e.g. for humans walking around on the surface. I don't think this is expected to turn Mars into Earth Mk 2. It's far too different anyway. (small, slightly too far from sun, frozen core, etc).

Re:you mean Musk's atmosphere

[Maritz]

You should strive to be less obsessed with Elon Musk. Might make you happier.

Re:How to pay for it

[Maritz]

We'll just take your word for all of that, shall we? lol.

Re:While were at it

[shione]

No need. Mars already has a mountain 15 miles high (Olympus Mons') you can use for that purpose after the atmosphere comes back.*

*Provided the mountain peak doesn't stick out above the new atmosphere. It is the highest mountain in the Solar System after all!

Re:It would help

[Baron_Yam]

>But without something to keep the atmosphere there it's pointless.

You know how I know you didn't RTFA? Or even the summary?

sure!

[ooloorie]

While not enough of a change to allow walking around without a space suit, this would make human exploration of the planet a much easier task.

Sure, if there are still humans in a few million years. But shielding the atmosphere and waiting for the planet to warm is not a feasible approach to terraforming.

If you want to terraform Mars right now, you first need to thicken the atmosphere by warming the polar caps. You then have lots of time protecting that atmosphere from solar wind.

Re:sure!

[painandgreed]

If you want to terraform Mars right now, you first need to thicken the atmosphere by warming the polar caps. You then have lots of time protecting that atmosphere from solar wind.

Yes, but without this, you'll just immediately end up losing that atmosphere to space. This will probably be an addition to any Mars terraforming project as once we are capable to doing any sort of terraforming, such a space station will be fairly trivial part of such a project in either technology or cost. Even then, heating up the planet won't get Mars an atmosphere at human survivable pressures. That will still require importing or creating more gasses and that will be the main heavy lifting part of any martian terraforming mission.

Re:sure!

[ooloorie]

Yes, but without this, you'll just immediately end up losing that atmosphere to space.

If that were true, Mars would have no atmosphere left. In fact, atmospheric loss rate is about 100 g/s, or about 3000 tons per year. The current Martian atmosphere is about 30 trillion tons of CO2. Let's say you increase that ten-fold, and let's say loss rates scale up not just proportionately, but 100 fold. You lose 3e5 tons of atmosphere a year from about 3e14 tons of total atmosphere. It would take geolotic time scales to have any appreciable atmospheric loss.

Re:sure!

[painandgreed]

Yes, but without this, you'll just immediately end up losing that atmosphere to space.

If that were true, Mars would have no atmosphere left. In fact, atmospheric loss rate is about 100 g/s, or about 3000 tons per year. The current Martian atmosphere is about 30 trillion tons of CO2. Let's say you increase that ten-fold, and let's say loss rates scale up not just proportionately, but 100 fold. You lose 3e5 tons of atmosphere a year from about 3e14 tons of total atmosphere. It would take geolotic time scales to have any appreciable atmospheric loss.

Heh. Well, we are sort of arguing about how big of paddles we need for the canoes needed to colonize the New World from Europe. things are bound to change anyway by time this is attempted. If terraforming of Mars was going on, they'd probably still build this or something similar just to try and stop radiation for endangering people on the surface. Plus, may well be that as the atmosphere grows, so will the loss and that the elements lost will be the most needed in the volatiles that seem to be in rare supply on Mars. Whatever loss that happens might well be cheaper for this than shipping in more from wherever they're getting it to begin with.

Re:sure!

[ooloorie]

Heh. Well, we are sort of arguing about how big of paddles we need for the canoes needed to colonize the New World from Europe

No we are not. We are arguing about the rate of loss of atmosphere from Mars, which you obviously greatly overestimate.

Plus, may well be that as the atmosphere grows, so will the loss and that the elements lost will be the most needed in the volatiles that seem to be in rare supply on Mars.

Which part of "let's say loss rates scale up not just proportionately, but 100 fold" was too difficult to grasp for you?

Actually doesn't sound all that nuts

[tomxor]

Trying to generate a magnetosphere in place is hard, but this is quite a strategic alternative. Nothing is cheap when talking about Mars, but this has to be one of the cheapest long range construction projects with the largest potential change to the planet.

Re:Actually doesn't sound all that nuts

[Baron_Yam]

There's a lot of 'Mars stuff' I'm surprised we don't toy with more. Or maybe we are, but it's all in some lab because (so far) that's good enough given our current level of technology and knowledge.

You'd think, for instance, somewhere someone should be experimenting with the minimum requirements for rendering Martian regolith into non-toxic, fertile ground. Toying around with the power requirements to augment Martian sunlight and temperatures to levels required to support Terran plants or trying to engineer plants that will grow and thrive at Martian insolation levels. Figuring out how to reliably supply the required power.

Or playing around with in situ production of building materials, automated mining and refining equipment, etc. Maybe we just don't have a firm enough grasp on what the Martian surface is actually like to bother starting with that. Send a robot to make a little red brick igloo, you know?

I'd certainly be up for a really inhumane experiment - sending a colony of mice in a sealed environment to see multiple generations of mammals under 0.38g. And it might be nice to attempt a small terrarium with some automated environmental systems to see how long we can keep it going. And while we're at that... drop a scale model of an airlock and cycle it until it fails so we can see how bad the dust problem is.

Re:Actually doesn't sound all that nuts

[drinkypoo]

You'd think, for instance, somewhere someone should be experimenting with the minimum requirements for rendering Martian regolith into non-toxic, fertile ground.

You would think that, yeah. Indeed, we probably have some sort of simulated martian regolith that can be used for this sort of research.

Toying around with the power requirements to augment Martian sunlight and temperatures to levels required to support Terran plants or trying to engineer plants that will grow and thrive at Martian insolation levels.

That sounds quite handy.

Or playing around with in situ production of building materials, automated mining and refining equipment, etc.

Yes, it would be handy if you could make bricks, or perhaps concrete.

I'd certainly be up for a really inhumane experiment

When can you be ready to go?

Re:While were at it

[puddingebola]

The martians will respond by launching their attack craft, there will be an attack fleet at earth in minutes.

Re:While were at it

[gnick]

No need. Mars already has a mountain 15 miles high (Olympus Mons') you can use for that purpose after the atmosphere comes back.

For now, maybe. But what about after the rise of the sea levels? Let's call this what it is - Man-made Martian climate change.

Please NASA

[jpellino]

stop watching "Thunderbirds" in the break room.

Re:you mean Musk's atmosphere

[Ol Olsoc]

You should strive to be less obsessed with Elon Musk. Might make you happier.

Or less creepy, at least.

Re:It would help

[Ol Olsoc]

>But without something to keep the atmosphere there it's pointless.

You know how I know you didn't RTFA? Or even the summary?

Its the fun game some slashdotters play. Read the headline, get pissed off, and post how it won't work.

T's definately B Ark material

[Thud457]

Well obviously we wouldn't send them in the first prototype ark, that wouldn't be prudent.
We'd send them in the second "B" ark.

Cheap and easy!

[poofmeisterp]

Hey, you can buy a directional electromagnet and all necessary solar capture/transfer stuff needed to handle that kind of a load for on it for only $6000 from Home Depot. Why haven't they done it already??
</sarcasm>
What. The. Fuck.

Re: While were at it

[Dareth]

Has this statement been verified by the Pew Research Center?

Cool idea but kind of pointless....

[ventsyv]

After Mars' magnetic field disappeared, it took 500 million years for it to lose its atmosphere. If we are terraforming Mars and working on a human timescale (hundreds or thousands of years) the amount of atmosphere lost due to solar wind will be negligible.

I think I saw this on SG:Atlantis once...

[obenchainr]

/EOM

dud dudu daaaa

[tomxor]

dud dudu daaaa dudu da da dud dudu daa daa daaaaaaaaaa. OMG MAKE IT STOP, KILL ME!

Re:Missing one very obvious point

[thinkwaitfast]

Mars is effectively a vacuum as far as your body is concerned. You would not survive longer on the surface of Mars than on the surface of the moon without an environmental suit.

Re:While were at it

[aicrules]

that would be kinda cool to have a mountain that if you climbed to its peak you were in space...

Troubling words from TFA.

[fahrbot-bot]

Magnetosheath, Magnetopause, Magnetotail

Carnac the Magnificent: (opens envelope) "Things X-Man Magento doesn't want to see on his annual medical report."

Re:Troubling words from TFA.

[fahrbot-bot]

Magento

I think my typing fingers have dyslexia.

Climate Change

[lloy0076]

Oooh, humans don't have any hand(s) in climate change at all - maybe melting the polar ice caps on earth is really just one big expiriment by scienctists!

yes, Yes, YES!

[jediborg]

I have been excited about this idea for a long time. Terra-forming Mars is a must before we can colonize in my opinion, and NASA is taking too darn long to do it. "Stop looking for life and put some there already!" - is what i say. My first thought was to jump start the Martian core so as to generate a natural magnetosphere like the planet once had (and earth has). I assumed we could drill to the center of the martian core, detonate a few atomic bombs to heat up the core and turn it back into magma. Then you just step back and let the natural rotation of molten metal generate a magnetosphere. The process would probably increase the amount of volcanism on mars (volcanoes would start forming/existing ones would start spewing) that would pour CO2 into the atmosphere, helping to thicken it and giving the bio-engineered plants we put there some "fuel" to grow. Melting the polar ice caps, distributing water and oxygen, and hopefully generating a thick atmosphere we could either use, or work with until it was livable for humans.

Unfortunately I did the math... turns out nuclear explosions don't convect heat that well, and martian rock (actually we used the parameters of common earth rocks) don't absorb heat that quickly. So the atomic bomb generates a lot of heat, but only for a few seconds and the rock doesn't absorb that much, turns out it would take more uranium than we have on earth to heat up the martian core with nuclear bombs. So I guess putting a shield up in the L1 Lagrange point is more feasible? Alright fine, lets do it! I just wish we could use explosions...

Re:While were at it

[rgbatduke]

Not so much Jesus as King John. 36 barleycorns to the foot! How can one not love a system of weights and measures based on the grain upon which so much human happiness depends?

And hey, the mile is really decimal. Heck it STANDS for 1000. It's just a "kilo-roman-pace". Is it anyone's fault, really, that the British went with a clothyard arrow as their intermediate standard instead of something sensible, like 1 pace = 5 feet = 180 barleycorns!

Jesus, OTOH, no doubt used cubits, anticipating that in modern times we'd use qubits, which even now is a critical word to know if you play words with friends or scrabble. Thanks, Jesus!

Re:you mean Musk's atmosphere

[cyberchondriac]

I, Musk

Re:It would help

[penandpaper]

I am not sure what you wrote but it's wrong. I know better than you about whatever it was you were talking about.

Get back to me when you can get on my level of not reading things. I didn't even read this to type it.

Simpler answer

[whitroth]

Toss ice asteroids at Mars. Or skim them from Jupiter's rings. Add a *lot* of water to Mars, and it's a lot easier to just use mass drivers plunked down on an ice asteroid to take a few years to head Marsward.

Questions

[DarthVain]

After reading the article (unslashdotlike I know), I really only have 3 questions...

1) Didn't really explain what a magnetic dipole was, nor how one might be constructed or what it might take to do so at the scale involved. All of those things seem kinda important.

2) As much as I can fathom, it at least involves a) magnets, and b) electricity. At the scale required, I'll go out on a limb and say really ridiculously big/strong magnets and a lot of power. Even if we concede that we're capable of building such things as super powerful magnets, and large independent power sources, the question I would have is how would you propose to get that out of our atmosphere? We've put some radiological power sources in space in the past, however I think even these had outputs of like 450W which isn't exactly stellar (pardon pun)... However the big thing would be unless said magnets were more less totally non-active unless power is applied, how the heck would those interact well with anything as complex as a rocket launch? I'm guessing not well.

3) Time. It mentions that it took 500 million years for the atmosphere to blow away, however it didn't really indicate how long it might take for any kind of change due to a magnetic field. We have trouble building things that last more than 10 years, never mind some small fraction of the cosmic time previously indicated...