The Creator, who gave glory to him, gave life to all his creatures. Although our sun is a very fierce place, it emits high levels of radiation, and the protective effect of our planet’s magnetic field makes it possible for life to survive on Earth.
Without a magnetic field, solar wind would blow off our planet’s atmosphere and the oceans would evaporate into space.
Earth ends here just like Mars. Our planet is the only rock planet with a strong magnetic field in our solar system, and its existence and continuity is one of the main reasons why Mars and Earth are so different.
What became of the magnetic field of Mars?
Scientists billions of years ago, due to a protective magnetic field similar to Earth’s magnetic field, the Red Planet had oceans filled with water. However, this field disappeared, and the seas and water of the Red Planet disappeared.
Recently, he overcame it New search It was published in the journal Nature Communications on February 3 to explain why. Researchers at the University of Tokyo have recreated the conditions expected at the heart of Mars billions of years ago, and the behavior of the molten metal led to a narrow magnetic field that will eventually disappear. That’s what happened.
As stated therein A statement As one of the planets closest to us, Mars has been capturing the imagination of people for centuries, exploring and continuing to explore using various unmanned space probes.
Despite this, there are some big unanswered questions about the red planet, the answers to which may shed light on our distant past and future, as Earth, Mars and all neighboring planets were born from the same things in the universe.
Kei Hiros, a professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Science at the University of Tokyo, had a particular question on his mind: If there was a magnetic field around Mars, why did it exist in the first place, and what happened to it?
Mars Heart Simulation
Heroes’ team created an object using a mixture of iron, sulfur and hydrogen believed to be at the center of Mars, and simulated the center of Mars in the laboratory.
Says Heros Press release According to the university, “Earth’s magnetic field is driven by unimaginable massive convective currents of molten metal at its center. It is believed that the magnetic fields on other planets will act in the same way.”
Although the internal structure of Mars is not yet known, meteorite evidence suggests that it contains sulfur-enriched molten iron. And seismic measurements, from NASA’s Insight study of the surface, indicate that the center of Mars is larger and less dense than previously thought. This indicates the presence of extra lighter elements in the center of the red planet, such as hydrogen.
With these details, the research team prepared the iron alloys expected to form the center and then tested them. The test includes a sample made of diamonds, lasers and iron, sulfur and hydrogen “Fe-SH”, which is expected to have previously formed the center of Mars.
The team then placed a mixture of iron, sulfur and hydrogen between the two diamonds and heated it with an infrared laser to simulate the high temperatures and pressures found at the center of a rocky planet. They photographed what happens when it melts under pressure, and maps how the composition of the sample changed over that period.
Behavior explains a lot
“We were very surprised to see a particular behavior that could be explained a lot,” Hiros says. “The homogeneous Fe-SH was initially divided into two distinct fluids, a complex state we have never seen before under these kinds of pressures.”
Because hydrogen-rich liquid iron and sulfur are poor, the density is higher than that of hydrogen-free sulfur-rich liquid iron, causing convection currents. These currents, like those on Earth, created a protective magnetic field around the planet.
This is similar to what happened in the early history of Mars, but these currents are short-lived and will not last long, unlike the Earth’s internal convection currents, when the two fluids are completely separated, and nothing is. Higher currents to drive the magnetic field.
When this happens, the hydrogen in the atmosphere is blown into space by the solar wind, dissolving the vapor. Eventually the oceans of Mars evaporated. This happened about 4 billion years ago. We can hope that the earth will lose its magnetic field one day, but there is no need to worry, it will not happen for at least a billion years.
These findings have implications for the search for habitable asteroids. Usually, the primary criterion for determining whether an exoplanet can deliver life is whether there is potential for water on its surface and whether it is too cold or too hot somewhere. Perhaps, the strong magnetic field should be another important step in determining whether a planet can catch its water.
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