{"id":131057,"date":"2021-11-22T05:22:20","date_gmt":"2021-11-22T13:22:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/11\/an-absolutely-bonkers-plan-to-give-mars-an-artificial-magnetosphere"},"modified":"2021-11-22T05:22:20","modified_gmt":"2021-11-22T13:22:20","slug":"an-absolutely-bonkers-plan-to-give-mars-an-artificial-magnetosphere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/11\/an-absolutely-bonkers-plan-to-give-mars-an-artificial-magnetosphere","title":{"rendered":"An Absolutely Bonkers Plan to Give Mars an Artificial Magnetosphere"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/an-absolutely-bonkers-plan-to-give-mars-an-artificial-magnetosphere2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Terraforming Mars is one of the great dreams of humanity. Mars has a lot going for it. Its day is about the same length as Earth\u2019s, it has plenty of frozen water just under its surface, and it likely could be given a reasonably breathable atmosphere in time. But one of the things it lacks is a strong magnetic field. So if we want to make Mars a second Earth, we\u2019ll have to give it an artificial one.<\/p>\n<p>The reason magnetic fields are so important is that they can shield a planet from solar wind and ionizing particles. Earth\u2019s magnetic field prevents most high-energy charged particles from reaching the surface. Instead, they are deflected from Earth, keeping us safe. The magnetic field also helps prevent solar winds from stripping Earth\u2019s atmosphere over time. Early Mars had a thick, water-rich atmosphere, but it was gradually depleted without the protection of a strong magnetic field.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, we can\u2019t just recreate Earth\u2019s magnetic field on Mars. Our field is generated by a dynamo effect in Earth\u2019s core, where the convection of iron alloys generates Earth\u2019s geomagnetic field. The interior of Mars is smaller and cooler, and we can\u2019t simply \u201cstart it up\u201d to create a magnetic dynamo. But there are a few ways we can create an artificial magnetic field, as a recent study shows.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Terraforming Mars is one of the great dreams of humanity. Mars has a lot going for it. Its day is about the same length as Earth\u2019s, it has plenty of frozen water just under its surface, and it likely could be given a reasonably breathable atmosphere in time. But one of the things it lacks [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":556,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-131057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-particle-physics","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/556"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131057\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}