Magnetic field is much older
- Thread starter Deckerd
- Start date
All Seeing Eye
Admiral
Erm, if the magnetic field was to fail would we not all get fried from cosmic radiation? I would have thought complex lifeforms needed a magnetic field in order to be protected long enough to evolve.
Yes, the article even says so. Perhaps you should read it.
All Seeing Eye
Admiral
Even the 'first tentative signs' would need some form of protection in order to live, multiply and evolve.
All Seeing Eye
Admiral
It's no different than all these Think Tanks that pop up now and again and point out the obvious.
Except they produce, y'know, quantifiable and measurable data, which can be repeated, rather than parroting "common sense" assumptions about the "obvious" that often turn out to be wrong.
Aww, let's give Taccy a break. He's never done that before.
All Seeing Eye
Admiral
Oh I see the difference, but sometimes the end result is just the same.
If the magnetic field is generated by a spinning molten core why would they believe that it wasn't there from the start? Mars has almost no atmosphere because its core cooled, its magnetic field died, and the solar wind blasted most of it away didn't it? Presumably it took millions of years after the field weakened for the atmosphere to be lost to space but even so I wonder how much atmoshphere they thought Earth lost before the field kicked in?
EDIT: Ah ok - they believe we lost a lot of water and lighter elements to space during this period. Interesting stuff.
EDIT: Ah ok - they believe we lost a lot of water and lighter elements to space during this period. Interesting stuff.
Hasn’t there been a sci-fi filmed made early around 2000’s called “The Core”! Haven’t watched it in while interesting thou point if fact scary if such a natural catastrophe occurred, we’d all, be in dire straits.
All we can do is speculate. We sure wasn’t around when it happened? It could be anyone’s guess as to what happened and to get concrete proof that will hold its own ground, well its not going to happen in this century.
Man must explore Mars now! Only the risks getting there and surviving the trip! Landing on the planet and surviving! Exploring the planet and surviving without incident!
Then taking-off from the planet if that works! getting back home with more samples and planning another trip within weeks of returning. Oh, this would take years…go to and from the planet and the risk of an accident will happen at some point. Its all numbers and something will go horribly wrong!
All we can do is speculate. We sure wasn’t around when it happened? It could be anyone’s guess as to what happened and to get concrete proof that will hold its own ground, well its not going to happen in this century.
Man must explore Mars now! Only the risks getting there and surviving the trip! Landing on the planet and surviving! Exploring the planet and surviving without incident!
Then taking-off from the planet if that works! getting back home with more samples and planning another trip within weeks of returning. Oh, this would take years…go to and from the planet and the risk of an accident will happen at some point. Its all numbers and something will go horribly wrong!
ELECTRICAL SUPERSTORMS!
You're right that the Earth's magnetic field has been present since differentiation into a core, mantle, and crust. There are no direct records on Earth but the moon had a dipole field only 100 million years after its formation, and given how a planetary magnetic field is generated the Earth must have had one as well. So the article is a bit misleading in that respect.
The main contribution of the paper is to document the strength of the early Archean magnetic field (although the magnetic field has been present since the formation of the Earth, its strength does vary). It is relatively straightforward to see that rocks formed in the presence of a magnetic field and to reconstruct the orientation of that field, but a lot more difficult to determine the strength. And the strength of the magnetic field has major implications for the loss of volatiles like hydrogen (and by extension, water), as the article says.
One point, the core also needs to spin in one direction to generate the magnetosphere.
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