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Hundreds of miles below, however, a molten sea of iron, nickel and sulfur churns. And new research suggests the gooey core will eventually solidify-either from the outside-in, forming an iron-nickel core, or from the inside out, forming a core of a fool's-gold-like minerals.
Andrew Stewart, a planetary geochemist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, said Mars' cooling core might restore magnetism to the red planet. "If liquid metal moves around a solid core, it could create a natural dynamo like the one found in Earth's core,".
SOURCE:
Space.com
Originally posted by Stale Cracker
I thought it was Mars 1/3 Earth gravity that lost its tenuous grip on the atmosphere (so the theory goes), not the collapse of its ancient magnetic field... so I don't know how Mars re-establishing it's magnetosphere would help "bottle-up" and contain any new out-gassings, but I'm no astrophysicist....
Originally posted by sy.gunson
The evidence would suggest that the solidification of a planet's core, probably through cooling, leads to loss of the molten dynamo which creates a magnetic field.
Originally posted by Langolier
I've heard before that there is really no reason to restart the magnet field anyway. The rate at which a new atmosphere would decay would be slow enough not to matter to any people living there. The most realistic ideas for terraforming I've heard have called for just pumping up the atmosphere's thickness to increase air pressure on the surface. That way plants can thrive in the carbon monoxide and people can simply wear gas-masks instead of full on pressure suits.
Originally posted by Langolier
The martian atmosphere seems stable enough now, even if it is still decaying.
As for the radiation, it isn't more than we can deal with. I'm scientist or any kind of authority on the matter, ofcourse, but wouldn't a thicker atmosphere help limit some of the radiation itself?
Excerpt
Extrapolating this measurement back over 3.5 billion years, they estimate that only a small fraction, 0.2 to 4 millibars, of carbon dioxide and a few centimeters of water could have been lost to solar winds during that timeframe. (A bar is a unit for measuring pressure; Earth's atmospheric pressure is about 1 bar.)
Originally posted by Langolier
If this is the case then I am quite curious as to what could cause Mars to cool so drastically and as a consequence loose it's atmosphere (or 'hide' it). Perhaps a large meteor impact? Once again, I'm just a layman.
Originally posted by Langolier
I wonder then that if said catastrophe had not come to pass if today we might call Mars the "green" or "blue" planet. If Mars was truly this hospitable in its past and only is in its current state due to bad luck of the draw then I wonder what the chances are that multiple life-bearing-planet solar systems are common?