It has been said that “the science is settled” regarding what we know about Earth’s atmosphere and climate. But recently scientists discovered that something we had accepted as a basic truth for a very long time is not true at all. One of the “basic truths” we all learned is that Earth’s atmosphere is “protected” from the solar wind by its magnetic field, unlike Mars which has lost most of its atmosphere due to the solar wind.
But when some space scientists compared notes recently, they discovered something startling:
“We said, ‘Oh my goodness — what we’ve been telling people about the magnetic shield is not correct.'”
And so what we thought to be true about our atmosphere, isn’t.
Earth Losing Atmosphere Faster than Venus, Mars
Irene Klotz, Discovery News
June 2, 2009 — Researchers were stunned to discover recently that Earth is losing more of its atmosphere than Venus and Mars, which have negligible magnetic fields.
This may mean our planet’s magnetic shield may not be as solid a protective screen as once believed when it comes to guarding the atmosphere from an assault from the sun.
“We often tell ourselves that we are very fortunate living on this planet because we have this strong magnetic shield that protects us from all sorts of things that the cosmos throws at us — cosmic rays, solar flares and the pesky solar wind,” said Christopher Russell, a professor of geophysics and space physics at the University of California, Los Angeles.
“It certainly does help in some of those areas but … in the case of the atmosphere, this may not be true,” he said.
Russel and others came to this realization while meeting at a comparative planetology conference last month.
“Three of us who work on Earth, Venus and Mars got together and compared notes,” Russell told Discovery News. “We said, ‘Oh my goodness — what we’ve been telling people about the magnetic shield is not correct.'”
The perpetrators are streams of charged particles blasting off the sun in what is known as the solar wind.
“The interaction of solar wind with Venus and Mars is pretty simple,” Russell said. “The wind comes in, carries a magnetic field, which wraps around the ionosphere of the planet. The ionosphere is basically dragged away.”
Complete article here at Discovery News
Completely OFF TOPIC…
A thought just popped into my head. Many people argue that alien life should be plentiful in the universe and potentially within our own galaxy. Their argument is that earth-like planets should be commonplace considering the number of stars and the frequency of planet discovery around known stars.
However, Earth exists and is stable enough for life because the atmosphere is stable. If the atmosphere is only stable because of vulcanism, then the earth is only stable because of it’s volcanoes. But the volcanoes themselves would have cooled out long ago without the tidal pull of our moon which is happily in an extremely stable (though slowly inching away from us) orbit… No moon, no long-term vulcanism. No long-term magma movement, no atmosphere… no atmosphere, not time for life to develop.
It may be that we are very very alone, or it may be that rocky planets near to their stars with moons in stable orbits are common.
There is a book about astronomy’s and cosmology’s neglecting of the effects of electromagnetism on the plasma universe. It’s title is: “The Big Bang Never Happened”. The author is Eric J. Lerner. It was published in 1991 by Times Books, a division of Random House.
The book’s value is in it’s demonstrating the impossibility of understanding the cosmos without including electromagnetic force in the equations. The explanations the author offers for the history of the cosmos may be no more correct than those given by the electromagnetic influence deniers.
@ur momisugly SandyInDerby (15:22:26) : I also wondered it anyone had correlated magnetic field reversals to climate?
—
I have a handy dandy sheet poster that has on it magnetic reversals in the traditional “bar stripe” form in one thin column, other paleo references in other columns, and on the far right side, interpreted sea level rises/falls. If you interpret the sea level rise/fall to climate, there’s some long stretches of time when the correlation would be weak at best. As we approach the Oligocene, there’s a bit of correlation, but that’s just my eye view. It would make for some nice research. I’m sure that’s been speculated and chatted up somewhere.
Gary Pearse (16:11:02) :
part of the radiant energy from this phenomenon should be added to the total. Is this totally wrong? Leif, what do you say?
Not totally wrong, just VERY wrong. The heat is not generated by friction, and the amount is extremely small, only of the order of an energy rating of 10,000,000,000 Watt or 10 GW = 10E10 W, which may sound like a lot, but really isn’t, considering that it has to be spread over the polar regions with, say, less than 1/10 of the total surface or 5E14 square meter, so each gets only 10E10/5E14*10 = 2E-3 or 0.002 W/m2 compared to TSI which is ~100 W/m2 [after correcting for albedo and angle].
mr.artday (16:25:51) :
The book’s value is in it’s demonstrating the impossibility of understanding the cosmos without including electromagnetic force in the equations.
Except that the E/M force is fully included in modern cosmology and is used all the time to describe plasmas and magnetic fields and their interactions. Take my advice: that book is pseudo-science and has no value other than for entertainment.
Sorry,
Leif, your statement suggests that you are in the “astronomy” camp which downplays electromagnetism every chance it gets.
Leif Svalgaard (17:09:35) :
mr.artday (16:25:51) :
The book’s value is in it’s demonstrating the impossibility of understanding the cosmos without including electromagnetic force in the equations.
Except that the E/M force is fully included in modern cosmology and is used all the time to describe plasmas and magnetic fields and their interactions. Take my advice: that book is pseudo-science and has no value other than for entertainment.
Uh? Did BB happen? What a shame! I didn’t see it!!! As Leif pointed it, EM is used in cosmology for explaining the nature and behavior of the other forces of nature, that is, strong force, weak force and gravity force. We split the four forces for easiness on understanding and studying each one of them, but in reality there is only one unified force working along the whole known Universe, manifested at four different levels and through four more or less different effects.
On the other hand, with the existence of false void, who needs a miracolous big bang to explain the origin of the Universe? But it’s a matter out of topic and it would drive us to many, many conjectures, out of topic, of course.
Addendum: “We split the four forces for easiness on understanding and studying each one of them, as we perceive them…”
10 GW = 10E9 W, not 10E10 W, but good point anyway. 😉
Mark
Anaconda (17:31:33) :
Sorry, Leif, your statement suggests that you are in the “astronomy” camp which downplays electromagnetism every chance it gets.
No need to feel so sorry. I’m in the “science” camp with specialty in electromagnetic phenomena which I try to promote as much as I can: solar magnetic fields, heliospheric current sheet, geomagnetic variations, etc. But the stuff has to make sense and the Electric Universe does not. It is however great fun.
Mark T (17:56:01) :
10 GW = 10E9 W, not 10E10 W, but good point anyway.
Perhaps I was a bit too generous with the energy. Good catch, of course it is 10E9 W [I clearly forgot to knock a zero off the first ’10’], so let’s put an extra zero in: 0.0002 W/m2
I don’t buy the idea of ice comets. If there are 30,000 per day bombarding the Earth, surely the corresponding bombardment of the moon, which has no atmosphere to absorb the impacts, would be noticible.
Anaconda, the existence of charged particles does not mean that space isn’t charge neutral. To be charge neutral only means that there are equivalent numbers of positive and negative charged particles.
Tom_R (18:36:56) :
Anaconda, the existence of charged particles does not mean that space isn’t charge neutral. To be charge neutral only means that there are equivalent numbers of positive and negative charged particles.
Agree, space has not charge, matter has charge and its charge can be neutral.
The contributors to this blog have no sense of proportion. They seem to jump on any theory that is convenient to their world-view. They also ultimately have no sense of time scale. [snip – suggestions of religion]
Anaconda (11:28:50) :
I think Leif put the solar wind at something like 0.001w/m^2, pretty insignificant I think.
Thing is, I think you missed the thrust of this article!
I’m in the PANIC, WAGTDE camp
The E being eventually 😛
DaveE.
Jeremy (16:23:21) :
Jeremy – you are assuming that an atmosphere is critical for life to evolve. Oxygen, for example, was a latecomer on a scale of things. It helped tremendously when it did arrive, but didn’t set the whole thing going. Here’s a recent paper that touches upon the subject (I’m assuming that you still believe some papers that come out in Nature !!!!).
http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/2675/did-nickel-kick-start-evolution
Given the number of planets out there, it is inconceivable to me that life has not evolved elsewhere.
O/T but thats what you get from following links…
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/06/10/winds-dying-down.html
but read on …
“Even so, that information doesn’t provide the definitive proof that science requires to connect reduced wind speeds to global warming, the authors said. In climate change science, there is a rigorous and specific method — which looks at all possible causes and charts their specific effects — to attribute an effect to global warming. That should be done eventually with wind, scientists say.”
Wouldn’t this be an Inconvenient Truth!!!
” Tom_R (18:32:13) :
I don’t buy the idea of ice comets. If there are 30,000 per day bombarding the Earth, surely the corresponding bombardment of the moon, which has no atmosphere to absorb the impacts, would be noticeable”
The mass of our moon and Mars is too low to retain comet water but impacts of the rocky kind are frequent.
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall/news/lunar/
“Three of us who work on Earth, Venus and Mars got together and compared notes,”
Is there something we are not being told?
Seriously though how come the earth is so cold today (compared to the long age of the dinosaurs for example) given that the sun’s radiance has been increasing for the last 4 billion years? It must have more to do with what’s happening on the earth and to the earth than anything the sun is doing.
Cold Englishman:
You should inform the Beeb that the theory is correct, but that they have the wrong planets.
I can almost hear the new story title: ” Scientists say that Saturn will collide with Uranus and that is going to hurt.”
.
.
.
.
For which I apologize.
Two facts
pro = positive
con = negative
CONgress = PROgress
Facts in an equation to be sure.
True or false is a matter of perspective.
Science, among other things, is a lot like that.
But i thought that the Sun’s magnetic field protected us as much from interstellar wind of a simliar nature?
That the sun cocooned us within a field, and helped keep the magnetic fields around earth stable ….
The quiet sun is not as powerful, and would allow more “random” assaults of whatever the universe may throw at us?
Excellent duscussion as ever
Todays nutty story from Auntie Beeb
Pallab Ghosh has obviously woken up with a hangover..
Have you heard? It’s in the stars,
Next July we collide with Mars!
Well, did you evah?
What a swell party this is!
(Cole Porter – 1939)
so where does the magnetic portal fit into this whole mess? Is it a case of the sun giveth and the sun taketh away? And Lief, does this stuff add into the total energy from the sun equasion?
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/30oct_ftes.htm
Leif,
After reading Anaconda’s posts a question occurred to me about Flux Transfer Events. Are these more or less frequent when the solar magnetic field is aligned with the geomagnetic field? Does the frequency or strength of FTE’s vary with the Hale cycle?
A further question would be if you could point me to a plot comparing all electromagnetic radiation from the sun from gamma through to radio, for periods of low and high solar activity? I would also like to know which frequencies are included in the TSI measurement.