Mars has a too small and cold core to make it into a magnetic dynamo. But there are other ways to generate a magnetic field. How about using its moon Phobos to create a plasma arc along its orbit?
Image by Engin Akyurt from Pixabay
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Terraforming Mars – the change of the red planet into a green planet is one of humanity’s greatest dreams. Mars is a terrestrial and relatively nearby planet with many benefits that could change it into a nice backup Earth. But there is a catch. Mars is missing a strong planetary magnetic field that would work as a shield against pesky cosmic rays. We are protected on Earth but Mars is under constant bombardment of dangerous particles.
Another thing is that a powerful enough magnetic field protects the planet’s atmosphere. The Earth is fine but Mars and its atmosphere is being wrecked by solar wind that over time removed the vast majority of its atmosphere. So, it would be great if it had some sort of a magnetic field. But that’s not so easy. Here on Earth, our magnetic field is generated by the processes in the Earth's inner core. But our technologies just aren’t capable of doing something like that. Luckily, there are other possibilities.
Ruth Bamford from the British company RAL Space and her coworkers are proposing an interesting solution. They claim we need a powerful stream of charged particles to create a functional planetary magnetic field. No matter whether inside or outside of a planet. And the second option could be part of terraforming Mars.
Bamford and her coworkers are convinced that we could create a massive ring of electrically charged particles that would encircle Mars thanks to its moon Phobos. This is the larger of the moon of Mars and also the one closer to its surface. The researchers propose to ionize particles on the surface of Phobos and then accelerate them to create a torus near the orbit of Phobos. That should create a magnetic field strong enough to protect Mars from dangerous radiation.
This is a very ambitious plan and it would stretch our technology to its limits. But it doesn’t need any fictional technology and thus could be done.
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