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
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The loss of 1kg/sec =1/2 million tons per year is small and some can be replaced by ionisation of water, the lighter elements like hydrogen will disappear quickly, oxygen will hang around a bit longer , as will nitrogen but where did all the nitrogen come from in the first place.
I didn’t realize that this was not already obvious.
I believe there are three main claimed proofs for AGW: the climate models, that the 20th century warming was ‘unprecedented’ – and the scientific consensus. Of course, many scientists disagree with AGW, but even if that were not so, the existence of a consensus is no proof at all. The history of science is basically about the fall of one consensus belief after another. How many scientists today believe that the sun goes around the earth? Phlogiston, the ether, continental drift, the nature of lunar craters, steady state creation, the origin of meteors – one could make a long, long list of scientific consensus beliefs that turned out to be completely wrong. Although they will deny it because it’s so embarrassing, the consensus just a few short decades ago was that we faced a new ice age.
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In the early 20th century a group of scientists determined that there were 24 chromosomes in the human genome. For decades the text books stated this. A group of scientists gave up their research. The reason? They found that there were actually 23 chromosomes. Clearly their technique was wrong, so they abandoned their research.
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Of course, the consensus that held sway for several decades was completely false. There are 23 chromosomes, not 24. But, as Matt Ridley pointed out in his fascinating book, Genome, all you had to do was look at some of the photographs in the text books. They clearly showed there were 23 chromosomes. Once a belief has taken hold, then people can become completely incapable of recognising facts that contradict their beliefs. Does this sound familiar?
Chris
don’t tarp me bro (09:27:32) : I was reading of the rim of fire. The pacific has movement under it and is rimmed with volcanoes. To what extent can currents move heat up north to the Artic sea? How do we eliminate geothermal energy as a source of heat in artic water?
We can’t because we’ve discovered a chain of volcanos under the Arctic water.
http://www.google.com/search?rls=en&q=arctic+ice+cap+volcano&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
geo (09:31:18) : I found myself wondering if there is a relationship here to fluctuations in the size of the Ozone hole with solar activity.
I think there is. It has been showing up as “low” ever since the sun went quiet (modulo what looks like Birkland Currents making Ozone in the North Pole area). Several times I’ve put forth the idea that lower Ozone opens a hole for IR to escape in the 9-10 micron range; but no body seems to care.
See:
http://exp-studies.tor.ec.gc.ca/e/ozone/Curr_allmap_g.htm
for both absolute and anomaly maps of ozone.
[quote name=Lindsay H.]
… but where did all the nitrogen come from in the first place.
[/quote]
That’s the question I want answered. Presumably H2O and CO2 came from ices that accreted during planet formation, the oxygen came from plants converting CO2, and the Argon came from decay of potassium 40. Where did the nitrogen come from? Breakdown of ammonia? Carbon 14 decay? Note that Venus’ atmosphere also has nitrogen.
One other thought, how much do the lunar tides on the Earth’s atmosphere increase atmospheric loss?
the words “scientific” and “consensus” do not belong in the same sentence.
pkatt (02:29:57) :
so where does the magnetic portal fit into this whole mess?
It doesn’t really, as the energy involved is minute, and the ‘portal’ opens every few hours all the time, and there is not just one, but many all over the front of the magnetosphere, and it is a misleading concept anyway.
Konrad (02:52:06) :
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?
Same answer as above. FTE’s happen all the time, every few minutes. The amount of flux transferred does depend on the direction of the solar wind magnetic field at the Earth: when aligned with the Earth’s field the IMF can connect to it and that enhances [or even causes] the FTE. The direction of the IMF changes almost randomly on a time scale of minutes and hours. Statistically, there is a persistent [small] component of the IMF that changes sign every solar cycle [at maximum], so FTEs and geomagnetic activity therefore have a 22-year cycle [see http://www.leif.org/research/Semiannual%20Variation%201954%20and%201996.pdf for more]
I would also like to know which frequencies are included in the TSI measurement.
The ‘T’ stands for Total, so ALL frequencies are included. The instrument simply lets solar radiation as it comes from the Sun fall on a black surface which is then heated by the energy received. An electric current is sent through another piece of the instrument until that other piece is at precisely the same temperature as the black surface. The amount of current needed to reach the same temperature is a measure of the TSI, and the current is then carefully measured.
Lindsay H. (03:04:29) :
where did all the nitrogen come from in the first place.
Produced in supernovae and present in the cloud from which the solar system formed.
Lately it seems that scientific “consensus” has more in common with the cartography of Europe during the 1990s than anything else.
Why the consensus on our oceans originating from comets? I’m not so sure I want to agree. Why not go with the Yellowstone theory of Geothermal expulsion of steam/water over millions of years?
Jessen (06:18:27) :
the words “scientific” and “consensus” do not belong in the same sentence.
What? You mean “there is no such thing as a scientific consensus” should never be uttered? Dang…
Mark
layne Blanchard (10:03:07) :
Why the consensus on our oceans originating from comets? I’m not so sure I want to agree.
They probably did, but not the mini-comets that Lou Frank thought he saw as black pixels in early satellite imagery.
Once reason for this is that the Earth was effectively vaporized or at least shattered into completely molten debris when the Mars-sized object that created the Moon slammed into it. When the Earth reformed from the debris, the water and all other volatiles had been lost, so they must have been added later.
How will this affect my scheduled trip to the moon in a few months?
[ snip 9/11 truther material is not allowed on this site]
[I must agree. ~ Evan]
Objection! (11:14:54) :
How will this affect my scheduled trip to the moon in a few months?
Bring your own water because the Moon by this mechanism ain’t got none.
thats kinda nerdy….
Yes, but what I want to know is: which of the 3 researchers works on Mars, which one on Venus and which one on Earth. And how the long the commute takes.
Brian D (23:48:42) :
True or false is a matter of perspective.
The following statement is true. The previous statement is false.
Take your time…. 🙂
Leif Svalgaard (10:31:45) :
Once reason for this is that the Earth was effectively vaporized or at least shattered into completely molten debris when the Mars-sized object that created the Moon slammed into it. When the Earth reformed from the debris, the water and all other volatiles had been lost, so they must have been added later.
Leif… I’m sorry, but that’s a fairy tale.
Nasif Nahle (15:37:36) :
“Once reason for this is that the Earth was effectively vaporized or at least shattered into completely molten debris when the Mars-sized object that created the Moon slammed into it. When the Earth reformed from the debris, the water and all other volatiles had been lost, so they must have been added later.”
Leif… I’m sorry, but that’s a fairy tale.
You being sorry does not change the fact that this a successful theory that explains most of what we know about the Moon’s formation, angular momentum, composition, moment of inertia, the works. So, because of that, it is the generally accepted fairy tale. It would be OT to go into details, but the data supporting this conclusion is overwhelming [just as for the big Bang, 🙂 ].
Leif Svalgaard (16:35:17) :
You being sorry does not change the fact that this a successful theory that explains most of what we know about the Moon’s formation, angular momentum, composition, moment of inertia, the works. So, because of that, it is the generally accepted fairy tale. It would be OT to go into details, but the data supporting this conclusion is overwhelming [just as for the big Bang, 🙂 ].
I know that the tale follows the mainstream, but not for this it is not a fairy tale. The rocks on the Moon are a billion years older than the rocks on the Earth. The proponents of the tale cannot explain when the ripping occurred and why deltaV didn’t take the Moon out of the system.
Leif Svalgaard (16:35:17) :
…but the data supporting this conclusion is overwhelming [just as for the big Bang]…
Leif, please, don’t tell me that a small iron nucleus is “overwhelming” data… 🙂
[The article says: “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.”]
Why are responsible scientists still spewing this “frozen-in” magnetic field line nonsense? Apparently they’ve never actually visited a plasma physics lab. Plasma is not a permanent magnet, it is not ferromagnetic and it is not a superconductor through which a current will be sustained indefinitely over time.
The scientists studying solar physics and the solar wind need to get a clue, methinks. The solar wind is low-density PLASMA. That they treat is as an ideal conductor (a superconductor that conducts a current with precisely zero resistance) does not make it so. That can be quite simply demonstrated (for the low-density plasma of space and the corona and in low-density plasma experiments in the lab).
One need only look at the page on low-density glow discharges, specifically this graph of plasma discharge regimes (dark, glow and arc discharge modes):
glow-discharge.com/Images/GD_Regime.jpg
It plots voltage V (in volts) against current I (in amperes). Resistance R (in ohms) is defined as the ratio of voltage to current:
R = (V / I)
View the graph. Show me where on the graph it touches the I axis (x-axis, lower axis, whatever)! Simply put except at the origin where NO CURRENT flows through the plasma, the graph never hits the I-axis. V never reaches zero, thus (V / I) never reaches 0, thus R never reaches zero. Where a current flows through low-density plasma, it ALWAYS has non-zero valued resistance. While it is an *extremely good* conductor, it is NOT an *ideal conductor* (superconductor).
Unfortunately that immediately tanks any notion of instant charge neutralization, the notion that no electric fields can exist within the plasma and the notion that magnetic fields can be “frozen in” to the plasma. The magnetic fields only persist so long as an electric current persists within the plasma. The magnetic field strength is dependent upon the strength of the electric current. This is the principle behind an electromagnet and conforms to the mathematics set forth by Maxwell, Ampère, Faraday, Gauss, Lorentz, et al.
Just figured folks might want to correct the bum theories that still persist out there…
Heliospheric scientists need to get over this hump and start talking in terms of currents, circuits and electrodynamics. Stop using outdated and experimentally falsified models.
I’d suggest the the following reading if interested in debunking “frozen in” magnetic field lines and “magnetic reconnection.”
Double Layers and Circuits in Astrophysics, by Hannes Alfvén, 1986.
Real Properties of Electromagnetic Fields and Plasma in the Cosmos, by Don Scott, 2007.
While they don’t necessarily go into the rather simple maths above, on resistance, they generally both agree that “frozen in” fields and “reconnection” are bunkum.
Nasif Nahle (16:55:37) :
don’t tell me that a small iron nucleus is “overwhelming” data…
You are apparently unaware of the data and the theory.
Here are the basics:
http://www.xtec.cat/recursos/astronom/moon/camerone.htm
Here is some more:
http://nai.arc.nasa.gov/news_stories/news_print.cfm?ID=111
but the real meat is ‘heavy going’ and has to do with the identical isotopic compositions of the Earth and Moon, especially for Hafnium and Tungsten, the evidence for a molten magma ocean, etc, and the time scale for the formation. Now, with any successful theory you can always find detractors, even Plate Tectonics, Evolution, Big Bang, and Frozen-in Magnetic Fields [c.f. the previous post] have these. Here is not the place [or topic] for a prolonged discussion of this.
Nasif Nahle (16:50:12) :
The rocks on the Moon are a billion years older than the rocks on the Earth. The proponents of the tale cannot explain when the ripping occurred and why deltaV didn’t take the Moon out of the system.
No, the solar system itself is 4.57 Gyr old. The Earth is 4.53 Gyr old, and the Moon is 4.53 Gyr old. The uncertainties of of the order of +/-0.02 Gyr.
The links in my previous post address the timing and the angular momentum problem.
Please, let this rest. It is a non-problem. There is wide agreement on this.
Michael Gmirkin (17:03:20) :
“frozen in” fields and “reconnection” are bunkum.
Reconnection has been directly observed [ http://www.astroengine.com/?p=475 ] and is a cornerstone of our understanding of plasmas in the Universe [although not in the laboratory because we cannot make plasmas that are dilute enough for reconnection to work]. And we are beginnig to drift off topic again. This is not the place to debunk the debunking of everything we know. There are specialized websites for such activities. Go there.