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+--- Thread: Barrier near center of Milky Way + Phobos could give Mars artificial magnetosphere (/thread-11320.html)
Barrier near center of Milky Way + Phobos could give Mars artificial magnetosphere - C C - Nov 21, 2021
An absolutely bonkers plan to give Mars an artificial magnetosphere
https://www.universetoday.com/153368/an-absolutely-bonkers-plan-to-give-mars-an-artificial-magnetosphere/
EXCERPT: . . . one of the things it [Mars] lacks is a strong magnetic field. So if we want to make Mars a second Earth, we’ll have to give it an artificial one.
[...] As the study points out, if you want a good planetary magnetic field, what you really need is a strong flow of charged particles, either within the planet or around the planet. Since the former isn’t a great option for Mars, the team looks at the latter. It turns out you can create a ring of charged particles around Mars, thanks to its moon Phobos.
Phobos is the larger of the two Martian moons, and it orbits the planet quite closely. So closely that it makes a trip around Mars every 8 hours. So the team proposes using Phobos by ionizing particles from its surface, then accelerating them so they create a plasma torus along the orbit of Phobos. This would create a magnetic field strong enough to protect a terraformed Mars.
It’s a bold plan, and while it seems achievable the engineering hurdles would be significant. But as the authors point out, this is the time for ideas. Start thinking about the problems we need to solve, and how we can solve them, so when humanity does reach Mars, we will be ready to put the best ideas to the test... (MORE - missing details)
Astronomers discover enormous 'barrier' separating the center of the Milky Way from the cosmic ray sea
https://www.space.com/milky-way-center-cosmic-ray-barrier
INTRO: The center of the Milky Way may be even more bizarre than astronomers thought, according to a new study.
For the study, a team of researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Nanjing investigated a map of radioactive gamma-rays — the highest-energy form of light in the universe, which can arise when extremely high-speed particles called cosmic rays crash into ordinary matter — blasting in and around the center of our galaxy.
The map revealed that something near the center of the galaxy appears to be accelerating particles to mind-blowing speeds — very near the speed of light — and creating an abundance of cosmic rays and gamma-rays just outside the galactic center. However, even as the galactic center blows a constant storm of high-energy radiation into space, something near the Milky Way's core prevents a large portion of cosmic rays from other parts of the universe from entering, the team reported Nov. 9 in the journal Nature Communications.
The researchers described the effect as an invisible "barrier" that is wrapped around the galactic center and is keeping the density of cosmic rays there significantly lower than the baseline level seen throughout the rest of our galaxy. In other words: Cosmic rays can get out of the galactic center, but have a hard time getting in.
How this cosmic barrier works, or why it exists, remains a mystery... (MORE)