Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Solar Wind destroying your Atmosphere

Well not ours per say because here on earth we happen to have a magnetic field protecting us. However over at Venus things get very messy when a solar storm hits its atmosphere.

The earth's magnetic field shields us from most of the effects of the solar wind. But Venus has no such field, meaning its atmosphere is the only defense against the solar wind.

Solar wind from the sun comes at about a million miles an hour, and hits close to Earth at about 50,000 miles before it hits the magnetosphere. Most of the wind flows around this magnetic shield, meaning we're protected from most, though certainly not all of what the solar wind carries. But on Venus, the solar wind routinely reaches its atmosphere, which is where NASA  observed some seriously bizarre space weather effects.

When the solar wind hits something. That something being the planet's magnetic field can sometimes create a phenomenon known as a hot flow anomaly. In these, the solar wind temporarily reverses direction, with material shooting backwards. This sudden rush of material creates an explosion. We've seen such anomalies around Earth's magnetic fields, as well as around Saturn and possibly Mars as well.

The question NASA's researchers set out to find was if these anomalies would also occur if the planet, in this case Venus, has no magnetic field.

Right now the ESA's Venus Express mission that is currently in orbit around the planet have mapped out the effect of this anomalies.

Although this satellite can't actually measure space weather, some of its instruments would have a telltale magnetic response to a hot flow anomaly that happened in its vicinity. After 3 years of data, they discovered such an explosion occurred on Venus. Exactly what these hot flow anomalies look like on Venus is an open question.

In the source below there is a video (which you should check out) showing the flow anomalies most likely occur right near the surface of the planet. Without a magnetic field to keep the explosions far away from the planet, Venus likely experiences the full brunt of these plasma shockwaves. The only good news for Venus is that without a magnetic field to excite the plasma in the solar wind, the explosions are likely a bit more mild than those that occur near Earth. However, that hardly makes up for the fact that the entire Venusian atmosphere can explode at any moment.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/news/venus-explosions.html

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